A Second Chance
by Windcage
Summary: [Story based on Gray Matter, by Jane Jensen] When the Lamb's Club leaves Dread Hill House after Angela's memorial service, Sam feels it is time for her too to say goodbye. A lucky run-in with David proves her wrong. One-shot (but probably not for long) for what is to this day one of my favorite stories.
1. Chapter 1 - Stay

**Stay**

Curtains of heavy rain kept rolling over Dread Hill House as a small group made its way down the manor's front stairs, the five umbrellas that had risen one after the other to keep its members protected from the downpour, closing in a tight circle as the group came to a stop on the driveway. Chatting. Waiting. Breathing a sigh of relief when a pair of headlights cut through the night and a Bentley rolled out of the darkness, moving down the house's gravel path, tires crushing the stones against each other.

The group broke apart just as the car stopped in the driveway. Four out of five umbrellas moving towards the imperiously arriving vehicle. The fifth making its way up the same path the Bentley had just come down of, the two young women taking cover under it proceeding to walk right under the warm orange light coming from the manor's checkered windows and towards the darkness beyond them. Wind-beaten rain soaking their clothes. High-heeled boots sinking into large puddles.

"You said that garage was close," the tallest of the two complained after a moment, strawberry blond hair hitting her face, a rich french accent cutting through the night. "Close, Samantha!"

Walking right at her side, the umbrella her friend tried to hide under leaving her left shoulder fully in the rain, Sam rolled her eyes at the glare she was being given.

"I meant it was 'close' in the sense you wouldn't have to wait long," she remarked. "I never said it was a good idea to come with me."

"You have to be me more explicit than that, dear!" came the all too dramatic answer. "Here I was thinking—"

Sam felt her boots sink into a new puddle, her friend coming to a grinding halt as her feet too sank into the water leaving Sam to take the umbrella from her hands and try and steer the two of them back towards the group near the Bentley and the warm blade of light coming from inside the manor's open door.

"I'm leaving you there," Sam announced signaling with her head towards the group, rain now cascading from the dark canvas to the floor rather than her arm.

"Leaving me there?!" came the outraged answer. "Non. Non. Non! I came this far!"

And the umbrella was taken from Sam's hands. She was being pulled now. Away from the manor's checkered windows. Away from the house itself and across the driveway. Sam was jumping over the Bentley's tire tracks now, heels sinking into the loose wet gravel, the margins of the large puddle coming back in view making it clear they were meant to go around it. Or, at least, so Sam had thought for although her friend stepped into the unkempt flowerbed and marched safely through land, Sam found herself being dragged right through the water.

"Helena!"

Helena wasn't hearing. In fact, Sam could see this fanatical gleam taking over her eyes when a lightning bolt went over the tempestuous sky and both the garage and the old tower standing right next to it came into view. If she had thought she had been dragged before it was because Sam hadn't yet experienced what was going on now. Helena was pulling on her arm. Forcing her to almost ran. Which would be nothing major if Sam had been wearing her **other** boots and Helena wasn't showing every sign of being able to sprint in the dark, in a storm, and while wearing stiletto-style heels. In fact, the only thing Helena didn't seem able to do was to keep the umbrella stable over them. It was wobbling all around. Being turned and going back into position. The rain hitting it cascading right on top of the two of them rather than to the floor with such frequency Sam could feel droplets of water going down her back. When they finally reached the garage and Sam managed to raise the door, both of them had become so drenched they seemed to have just fallen inside St. Edmund Hall's pool.

"Finally!" Helena nevertheless exclaimed, triumphant, hair sticking to her face as she went to take refuge away from the open entrance. "A roof! I thought we would be stuck outside forever!"

Still at the entrance, twisting her black hair, water dripping from it to the floor, Sam looked over her shoulder. The garage was as it had always been. The same old and moldy paintings peeked from under a blanket while lying against the wall to her right. There were a large toolbox and a fire extinguisher. A fuse box. The Bentley was not here, of course, waiting as it was in the driveway. Her red bike, however–parked, as always, on the opposite side of the garage the car usually occupied–remained and it was near the wall in front of it that Helena stood. She was taking a small mirror from her bag and grimacing at her own reflection.

Making her way to her bike, dropping right next to one of the rear-view mirrors to find herself also making sure her dark make-up hadn't taken any major damage, Sam had to snort when she again looked to the back of the garage and found Helena with a make-up case in her hand:

"Oh, come on, you look fine!" Sam exclaimed.

"Fine? I look like a rat!" Helena remarked, outraged. "A muddied-rat which is worse! Regardé ça!"

She pointed at the tight bodice and pink mini-skirt peeking from under her black jacket with passion. It wasn't as if Helena wrong about the mud. There were tiny bits of it splattered a little all over her clothes, but–

"It washes off, Helena," Sam pointed out while dropping to one knee next to her bike, the key to the padlock on its front wheel being taken out of her jeans' pocket. "Believe me, I ride one of these, I know all about mud. It's no big deal."

"No big deal?" Helena repeated, horrified. She was closing her make-up case now, the pale light washing over her wet hair and clothes giving her the look of a tragic heroine. "Dear, these boots are suede! Suede! They are ruined! I wonder if Papa can still find another pair, he—–"

Helena crossed her arms with that thought, a frown being given to the garage's gray ceiling.

"Knowing Papa he will end up sending the wrong color," she pondered in a low voice. "Or the wrong number. Or both."

She sighed and Sam could see Helena turn her attention back to her, eyebrows dramatically raised.

"Men, don't you agree?"

"Yeah, men."

Helena frowned at the lack of enthusiasm in her answer, a long "Hmmm—" going through her lips as she stood there, under the incandescent light, thoughtful. It took a while for the clicking of her boots to echo on the garage, when Sam looked up, however, this shadow having called her attention there, Helena was on the other side of the bike, leaning over the seat, head on one hand.

"Have you talked with Styles?" she asked.

The chain that had been locked around the bike's front wheel slipped until it was hanging limp from Sam's fingers. The question, one she had known would came sooner or later—one she should have known was the reason Helena had wanted to follow her to the garage—nevertheless leaving Sam standing there, looking at the bike front wheel and seeing absolutely nothing, sadness and guilt taking turns at beating her heart.

"No," she finally admitted. "Not yet."

"You have to talk with him, Samantha!" Helena reprimanded, a hand wave from Sam making her step away from the bike's seat and watch as Sam opened it. "He sure looks like he wants to talk with you!"

Sam gave her this sad half-smile, the chain and padlock being put at the button of the open seat.

"I very much doubt that," she said and Helena looked outside, beyond the storm, the trees and the driveway, a small smile touching her lips when she returned to Sam.

"He is looking here now."

Sam's eyes widened, Helena's words pointing her attention straight outside, passed the gray garage and towards the house's long drive where the Bentley was waiting, headlights illuminating the falling rain and the dark night. There was a figure still standing next to it. That of a man. He was holding the car's back door open. Talking with those inside. Black umbrella in hand. The light from the passenger compartment drew the lines a good-looking face—and those of the mask covering half of it.

Still, and as recognizable as that mask made David, Sam didn't think she would need it to know that was him. Not even at this distance. Not even in a night as dark as this. And, if she was honest with herself—and she had this bad habit of always doing that—it didn't look like David had ever glanced this way. Instead, he was standing next to the car like he was trying to keep it from leaving. Like he would have preferred to escort all three of the students inside on foot all the way back to Oxford in the middle of a storm than let them go in the car. Like he didn't trust the vehicle to deliver them there safely. Like he didn't expect it—or anyone—to make it back.

Sam would be lying if she said she didn't understand. The photo of the mangled and charred remains of the car David had been driving three years ago—the wreck where his wife, Laura, had died—was hard enough to forget without her own experience of sitting and waiting for the car her parents had left in and that had never made it back.

She knew what must be going thought David's mind, but she wouldn't have known what to say even if she was with him in the driveway and so, in the end, she watched him close the car door and step away, the Bentley's red tail lights disappearing down the road leaving only David's figure standing in the rain. Still watching the night. The lights of the manor washing over him as he stood there. Alone. And never looking her way.

"You have it bad, dear," Helena pointed out once David made his way back inside the manor that was his home and Sam dropped her eyes. Sadness washing over her expression. "Really bad."

Helena's gentle smile, the one she was wearing once Sam looked back at her to find her leaning against the wall, was more than she could handle. She went straight back to action, fishing a spare helmet from inside the bike's seat compartment and shoving it into her friend's hands.

"Why does everyone keep insisting I am in love with David Styles?!" Sam snapped, now reaching out to close the bike's seat.

"And are you not?" Helena inquired, going from staring at the helmet she had been offered to look at Sam. Her eyebrows rose at her expression. "Non? So–Can I have him all for myself?"

The bike's seat slipped from Sam's fingers, crashing close with a bang.

"Is any male creature safe while you are around?" Sam tried to cover her second-long slip with while Helena went to face her with this cat-like grin.

"Is it?" she teased with a broad smile. "Harvey perhaps?"

If Sam wanted to stir the conversation any other way, she failed her cue right there. She was midway between going around her bike and leaning to pick a second helmet—her own—from the cold gray floor when Helena returned with the heavy guns.

"So," she purred, still leaning against the wall. "Can I have David?"

"**No!**"

Helena covered her lips as she chuckled, her warm laughter filling the gray garage and mixing with the song of the incessant rain and Sam's defeated groan.

"This is payback for Charles, isn't it?" she said, but Helena's laughter had come to an abrupt end, she was staring right ahead, towards the covered paintings, not looking like she was seeing them. Not looking like she was here.

"Helena?"

Helena crossed her arms. Hair still sticking to her face. Expression falling. Sam thought–She thought she knew what Helena was thinking about. What subject she was about to touch.

Angela.

What had happened to her.

It wasn't something Sam wanted to even think about. And so she stepped forward, marching towards the red bike, and took the situation into her own hands before Helena had a chance to.

"Still want that ride?" Sam offered, holding her own helmet against her hip and pointing behind her, towards the roaring storm and the empty driveway. "The car is already gone."

Helena gave the half-helmet she had in her hands a doubtful look before pulling herself from the wall.

"I'm already drenched to the bones, so why not?" she said, determined. "Allons-y."

The bike exited the garage, gray stone slabs giving way to brown pebbles before its front tire sank into the large puddle right outside and the headlight shone a long beacon over the driveway and the trees and this line of unkempt shrubs.

"Are you holding on back there?" Sam threw behind her, voice muffled by the helmet and the rain.

"How much more should I be holding—?"

Helena's words turned into a startled yelp, her arms closing painfully tight around Sam's waist when the motor went back to life and the bike roared forward. They were going right through the waterfall falling from the garage's roof now, then passed it and the garage itself, riding right under the windows to the parlor, the figure Sam thought she saw there, cut against the orange light, looking outside, making her take a glance through the rear view mirror— hopeful—before leaving Dread Hill behind.

If David had actually been at the window— if it hadn't been only wishful thinking on her part—he hadn't been there anymore when she had looked back and so… So, she drove. Down the already familiar road to Oxford. Down the city center, the never-ending rain beating her down.

The Bentley ended up going by them before they reached St. Edmund Hall and an even more drenched Helena jumped from behind Sam to the sidewalk, giving the helmet back, taking a decisive step towards the dormitory and what she loudly announced as a 'warm bath', before suddenly turning back to Sam and her bike, her expression so strange Sam—closing the spare helmet inside the seat—was left to blink.

"What is it?" she queried while going back to sit on the bike. Her question made Helena's eyebrows knit further, rain cascading from her umbrella to the floor as she threw a penetrating look at Sam.

"Why do I get this feeling you are planning a disappearing act?"

Sam raised one hand to her heart, her eyebrows raised in an overly exaggerated ark.

"Disappearing act? Me?"

"Yes. You," Helena retorted, suspicious, and crossed her arms—or did whatever passed for that while holding an umbrella. "I will see you tomorrow, Sam. Be careful going back."

"I will," Sam reassured, leaning forward over the bike, rain falling around her and dripping from the helmet's open visor as she watched Helena walk all the way to St. Edmund Hall's entrance, turn back towards her one last time—still suspicious—and step inside with such determination she never got to see the enthusiastic wave Sam was giving her fall apart. Or the way, it so clearly stated she had been right.

"Goodbye, Helena," Sam whispered, sadly, and she closed the helmet's visor, looking up to the dark sky, watching the scars of light go through the clouds and the flashes cutting through the night, before again taking to the road, rain beating her down.

It was, Sam supposed, fitting that it should end how it began. With a storm roaring over England's green pastures. With her driving through the rain. Alone.

It was only right.

It was as things had always been.

But this time, the excitement Sam had always felt while being on the road was missing. That drive to know new places, to get her next gig, to put on her shows, that drive that had taken her all over Europe, that had made her leave the US, simply wasn't there. She had wished so so much for—

Sam's expression hardened, fingers hitting the turn light handle on her bike.

It didn't matter what she had wished for. It had always been a silly dream anyway. And it was an impossible one after the monumental screw up from some days ago. The same screw up that had sent all her not-so-carefully-built lies crashing in spectacular fashion, that had convinced David— of all people—that she was behind those cruel pranks going on at the University. The ones tied with his experiments. The ones meant to make him believe his wife was coming back. The ones she had, fortunately, find out in time Angela was behind.

Angela.

The rain forced Sam to slow down, the downpour becoming now so strong she could barely see a meter in front of her finally bringing the bike to a stop.

She didn't know what to make of Angela. In fact, Sam had been always so disgusted with the person who had been behind all of what had happened, that she was surprised by how sorry she actually felt for the culprit and for how everything had come to that absolutely horrific end. What had happened—

No. She wouldn't think about it. Angela's memorial had been a dreary enough occasion without thinking about the rest–be it the gray clouds that had hanged heavy overhead or the rain that had that seemed to conspire to scare the mourners away, almost like Angela had people to spare.

Sam dropped her head at that thought, the rain losing a little of its fury sending the bike again forwards.

If she was being honest, that so few people had been at Angela's memorial hadn't surprised her at all. Sam knew too much about being alone not to recognize a kindred spirit and that was why she had wanted to be here. Why she was still here. She had wanted to be at the memorial and David—David had said nothing about her staying at Dread Hill. That had been kind of him. For all his bite and snappish temperament, David had been kind. Always. Giving her the room at Dread Hill. Raising her salary. Fixing the bike. Even Houdini. He was the kindest anyone had ever been to her and—

And she had to go and screw it all up.

And, as far as she didn't think David hated her anymore, she didn't think he had forgiven her either. So it was better to say goodbye. To leave before she overstayed her welcome. To bid farewell to the very thing she wished above all and that she had found, if just for a moment.

A place to come home to.

"I'm back, Houdini," Sam whispered upon entering her room, the large white rabbit that was asleep on the bed—having once again gotten out of his cage—gaining a smile when he raised his ears, nose twisting.

"This is a great bed," Sam agreed, getting belly down on the mattress to caress his head. "But we have to leave now."

Houdini's red eyes followed her as she made her way to the other side of the room, what Sam at least imagined to be judgmental look going through his expression as he hopped all the way after her, stopping at the edge of the bed to see her pick the picture of her parents from the bedside table.

"I screwed it," she confided in them before pointing at the window with this lopsided smile. "At least, I won't have to leg it down the ivy, right?"

God knows that had actually been on her plans when she had first gotten here. The window had been her emergency exit if things went wrong. Like they so often did. But, atypically enough, this time she got to leave through the front door and doing that was proving a lot more difficult than opening the window, land on the side of the house and run all the way to the gate.

It was really being a lot more difficult than that.

"I love this house," Sam whispered, sitting beside Houdini for a moment, fingers running through his fur as she looked around, and then, finally, shook her head. "This is silly."

Sam was up again, marching to the backpack that was still at the foot of the bed, her few belongings and the photo of her parent's being put back inside before she turned to the very small pile of clothes Mrs. Dalton had left over the dresser and rolled them up, putting them inside a bag she had just bought in Oxford.

"No more fighting for space with the clothes," she told Houdini and judging by the rabbit's behavior when she started taking apart his cage he knew what was coming. In fact, he was giving her this look. He was giving the dreaded 'Look' and he didn't stop even as she put him inside her backpack.

"We will stop somewhere nice," Sam promised him, before closing the bag and putting it on her back. "We have lots of nice places to explore."

But there won't be any more like this, an uninvited voice whispered inside her head and Sam stopped just short of leaving what had been her room, fingers hovering over the light switch, attention going over the bed, the dresser, the old carpet and the door as it closed and left her standing in the atrium.

The manor was silent. The storm roaring and thundering overhead the only sound echoing inside. But even in the depth of night–and judging by the clock on the dining room tolling the time it must be two in the morning already–it was not dark here. It was never dark here. The window by the stairway had always made sure of that. And tonight, so did the storm. The flashes of light washed over the lion statue at the end of the stairs and the veiled woman looking down on the atrium. They played on the large chandelier hanging overhead. They showed a pair of blue eyes watching from the portrait in the stairway–the eyes belonging to a beautiful woman who seemed as pleased by what Sam was about to do as Houdini was and who—even if she had long been dead, even if she was just a portrait—Sam wanted to face as much as she did David.

And so, she walked straight under Laura's portrait, marching to the small table holding the phone, never looking back, the cellphone Mrs. Dalton had lent her being put next to it.

Sam wondered what Mrs. Dalton would think once she found this here in the morning. It didn't seem fair to worry her. But then again, what Sam was about to do—and that was to disappear in the middle of the night without telling anyone— wasn't fair to anyone. As wasn't that her mind seemed to be running over an entirely new set of excuses to get hold of the cellphone again and copy the contacts.

She wouldn't do that. No matter how much she actually wanted to.

She wouldn't take Helena's phone number.

She wouldn't take Mrs. Dalton.

And above all, she wasn't about to write down David's.

If she had learned anything while being turned over from house to house while being in foster care was to cut ties.

And she was leaving.

This was meant to be goodbye.

So why why was she still here?

She was standing in the middle of the atrium like a scarecrow—if there ever was a scarecrow with a backpack and bag and holding a bike's keys on his fingers. She was not taking a single step toward the front door. Instead, she was watching the flickering light peeking from under the door to the parlor, frowning at the way the door rattled. And now, she was walking towards it, leaving the bag with her clothes on the atrium's floor. She was…

Inside.

Sam had to press both sides of her head at seeing what had once been the waiting room for the Center of Cognitive Abnormality Research–now simply a living room–opening in front of her.

What was she doing here? What—?

The sound of crackling and snapping wood brought Sam's thoughts to a halt, her attention immediately slipping towards the fireplace.

So that was the reason for the flickering light she had seen under the door, for the one still filling the parlor. David had clearly forgotten to make sure the wood was no longer burning before retiring. As he had, Sam noticed with a sigh, to close the window. Fire or no fire, the room was freezing. And, really, the only good thing here was that she hadn't to squeeze herself passed a skeleton to go and close it. Not with her and Mrs. Dalton having moved both that and the anatomical model inside David's old consulting office when the old governess had found out the entirety of the Lamb's Club was coming here after Angela's memorial and stated rather peremptorily that the medical horrors were out the door.

Sam suppose Mrs. Dalton would have to ask David for help to put them back in place. She supposed David would want things back as they had always been. And she really shouldn't care. Not anymore.

And yet she very obviously did.

A head shake being given to herself as she stepped away from the now closed window, Sam marched deeper inside the parlor, walking along the bookcases, towards the fireplace and the–

Sam frowned, the cold from her wet clothes giving way to some warm as she approached the fireplace, looking around.

Had someone coughed just now? She could have sworn that—

Sam's eyes widened. She stopped before she ever got to reach the flames. Right at her side, resting half slumped on the nearest of the two dark green armchairs, was a man. A pale man with raven black hair. And now Sam was standing here, wide-eyed and bewildered.

D-David?

What–What was he doing here ? Shouldn't he be, if not in his room, at least down in the lab? Why—?

The many questions bombarding Sam's brain came to a halt as she kept looking at David. Or rather, the way he was dressed. Not that there was nothing new there. He was dressed just like she had always seen him dress. White shirt and dark trousers. The leather glove he always hid his right hand in firmly in place. But—

Wasn't he cold?

Sam approached David quietly, dropping to her knees in front of him, her fingers reaching out to touch the back of his hand and then moving forward, so that her hand rested on his.

As cold as she herself was she could tell one thing.

He was freezing.

Where was that—?

Sam spotted the red blanket laying over the sofa's back the very instant she looked up.

Rising back to her feet, fingers sliding slowly over David's hand, she picked up the blanket and covered him with it, her attention lingering on his face for a moment before she stepped away.

Okay. This was it . She really really had to leave before she lost the entirety of her nerve and did something stupid. And, to be honest, she would have fled out the door right this moment–she was already on the move–but there was this blue rectangle on the carpet, laying right under David's hand like it had slipped from his fingers and, honestly, Sam had just wanted to pick it up and put it over the center table. That was all she meant to do. But she ended looking at it instead.

The blue rectangle was a photo. The photo of a couple. The good-looking man, standing to the left, was obviously David, even if he was not the David she knew. The man on the photo was–happy. He stood there with his head tilted and giving the camera this half-smile, like he was laughing at a private joke. She had known David for many things—like, but not restricted to, being absolutely impossible—but not for smiling. She had never known him for that, much in the same way she had never known the woman standing with him. Laura. Beautiful as always. Blond air cascading down her shoulders. An elegant white dress hugging her figure.

They looked perfect. That had always been Sam's opinion. But while getting to her feet to lay the photo safely on the center table, next to the place where David had left his mask, the flickering light from the fireplace guiding her steps, Sam found herself doing something she had never everdone. And that was staring. At the photo. Or rather, at the wall of blue tiles behind David and Laura.

There was something—

She was opening a path to the fireplace now, dropping to her knees, leaning forward so that the flickering flames now warming her, could also illuminate the image.

A moment later, she had her eyebrows raised.

No, she hadn't been wrong. There was something on the tiles. A shadow. But it made no sense with the couple standing under it. It wasn't them. No. Instead, it looked like this distorted creature. A being with long limbs, whose burning eyeless sockets stared hatefully at the pair under it. Like it wished them warm. Like—Like it was alive.

"I believe we can agree it is rather unnerving," came a deep male voice and if Sam described her reaction as simply being startled that would be a gross understatement.

In fact, what really happened was that David's voice practically made her jump out of her skin and, in all fairness, she was damn lucky there wasn't an indentation with her face on the burning wood considering she had almost dived head first into the fireplace out of sheer fright.

Not that David seemed to notice any of that going down. In fact, when Sam scrambled to her feet and turned to him, he was pressing his eyes, a tired glance being thrown her way.

"What are you doing up?"

Contrary to David's present drowsy state, Sam's heart was beating so loudly it seemed to threaten to come jumping out of her throat.

"Saving you from pneumonia!" she snapped, holding her chest. "You almost scared me to dead! I thought you were asleep!"

Again glancing her way, the blanket Sam had wrapped around him getting this thoughtful look when it slid to the floor, David let himself sank back into the pillows behind his back, right hand covering his eyes.

"I was," he whispered and, remembering Mrs. Dalton's comments about how little he managed to sleep, Sam couldn't have felt more guilty if she tried.

"Sorry," she said, dropping her voice, and went back to the photo, back to the humanoid shadow drawn on the blue tiles.

"What is this?" she queried after a moment of frowning at it. "The thing on the tiles?"

Her answer was quick coming.

"Angela," David stated, voice going back to a more professional tone when he stopped pressing his eyes and straightened, clearly pensive. "Or possibly some sort of mental, possibly emotional, projection."

Less than two days ago, Sam would have taken that with a grain of salt. Possibly put it to one of David's very unorthodox 'brain' theories and run with it. But then, then things had gotten weird. They had gotten very weird indeed.

"That's Angela?" she repeated, still studying the shadow. "It looks—"

Sam pressed her lips. She wasn't about to call that what had just crossed her mind. Not in a million years. David, on the other hand, obviously had no problem doing it.

"Like a demon?" he offered and leaned over the sofa's right arm, the hand that went to hold his head clearly being used to keep the right side of his face from view. "How are you?"

Sam threw David a penetrating look as answer.

"How are you?" she asked, stressing that last word. "You were with Angela when she—You know."

There was this long moment of silence, one in which David went to stare at the flames, a distant expression taking over his eyes. Then—Then he was up and marching to the center table.

"I have seen worse," David stated, picking up the white mask that was there and hiding the right side of his face with it.

"What do you know about Angela?" he now asked, moving across the foyer, the sofas and the fireplace being left behind as he approached the closed door to his old consulting office.

Standing next to the fireplace, taking advantage of the warmth, Sam tilted her head at his back.

"I told you everything I know when we went after Angela," she pointed out. "In the car."

David scoffed, the note of humor taking over his voice one that had more of derision—against himself—than anything else.

"If I had the level of retention you imply, getting those diplomas would have been a walk in the park," he replied, giving this hand wave to the diplomas on the wall before stepping inside his old office. "If I remembered correctly—"

David had just hit the lights and Sam would be lying if she said she hadn't just muffle her laughter when the anatomical model jumped into view and he took a step back, an alarmed exclamation leaving his lips.

"For the love of—! What is this doing here?!"

Sam was not laughing. She was also not tilting her head so she could watch David as he went around the anatomical model and made his way deeper inside the office—Or maybe she was. Maybe she watched him just for a moment longer, before he got out of view, and Sam shook her head. Judging by the reigning silence, David had forgotten she was still here. This was her opportunity, wasn't it? To leave. She wasn't making this easier on herself by lingering here. She—

"I will need Angela's student enrollment files. Today."

Had David said that a second later, Sam would have been truly gone. As things stood, however, Sam had her hand over the door handle and she didn't think she had ever moved so fast in her life. She was on the other side of the parlor now, sticking her head inside the office.

"Wait!" she exclaimed. "I'm not fired? I can stay?"

Crouched behind the door of one of the bookcases on the consulting office, David looked her way, studying her for a second.

"Do you want to leave?" he asked.

"No!"

"Good," came the reply and David closed the large book he had over his legs. "It is difficult enough to find one good assistant, without having to go around worrying about replacing her."

He was up, putting the large tone over the ancient desk right in the center of the room and turning to her.

"However, there is one condition."

Sam crossed her arms, head tilting.

"What is it?"

David's dark brown eyes bored into hers.

"No more lies, Sam," he put forth and that must be his Professor voice for Sam froze for a moment. Or she did, until this glare he was giving her fell apart under, apparently, pure practicality. "At least, unnecessary lies."

It was Sam's turn to frown.

"Define unnecessary."

"Telling me you were an Oxford student comes to mind," David immediately tossed at her and as far as that hadn't been right in any sense of the word, Sam really couldn't help defend herself.

"I needed the job," she pointed out. "You almost fired me for being late and I had just found you four volunteers! If I had told you I wasn't a student you would have kicked me out the door!"

David apparently hadn't a come back for that. He stood there for a moment, blinking, trying to find something to say—which also involved searching for it in the ceiling—and then, finally, shaking his head.

"I can't say I wouldn't," he admitted, going to lean against the desk, fingers tapping on the book. "Out of curiosity. The student the university sent to work here. What came of her?"

Sam went to lean against the door frame, the memory of the night she had arrived, of a young blond woman exiting a taxi right by the gates, making her raise her eyebrows.

"Do you think I spirited her away or something?" she asked, her teasing smile being immediately hit by a glare.

"Sam."

"It was just a joke," she hit right back at David. "Is this your not lying test?"

"You can see it that way."

Figures. Sam let out a long exhale, hands now on her jean's pockets.

"She arrived at the same moment I did," she informed David. "And ran away screaming."

She probably should have lead up with that. David visibly froze for a pair of seconds, before letting his head fall on one hand.

"I'm assuming you mean it literally," he grumbled. "I would like to say I was surprised. I really am not."

And he made his way back to the bookshelves, back to searching for some tone or another, back to putting them on a neat pile over the desk.

"You came back," he commented after a moment, attention going from the title on the spine of the book he had just picked up and back to Sam. "After that argument—"

David stopped himself, harshness taking over his expression.

"No, that is hardly the right description," he whispered to himself before coming back to her. "You came back after I went all the way down to London to shout at you. I have no idea why you would want to help me after that."

Sam was back from leaning against the threshold in a heartbeat. Eyes wide. A note of outrage in her voice.

"You think I would have left you alone here when Angela–?!"

"I don't think anything since you obviously did not," David cut through, impatient, what irritation was in his voice, however, had given way to a note of sadness when he continued. "But I certainly gave you no reason to be here. Less yet to stay."

Sam—She was looking at everywhere but him now. What Helena had said earlier, what Mephistopheles had said back at the Deadulus Club—the two of them weren't wrong. But she wasn't about to tell David what those two had already figured out. So, she went with something else entirely.

"The food is quite delicious," she shrugged.

"Is it?" David asked and his expression saddened. It saddened if just for a moment. The next, he was back on his game. "I assume that is better than going over remuneration—"

"Well, that is a factor too," Sam joked and David pressed his lips, picking the books that were over the desk, what started to look a lot like a balancing feat over one arm sending Sam marching inside the office before the tower of books lost all manner of structure and went tumbling right to the floor.

She had just picked those that were still on the desk, however, when—

"That is not looking better," David commented, frowning from over the books he was carrying, the way he was looking straight at her forehead making Sam try and comb her bangs to cover the swollen bump from view. "I'm not at all convinced it was a good call not to go to the hospital."

"I told you, I'm fine," she whispered.

"I heard you the first time," David retorted, frown growing deeper still as he took in the rest of her. "But judging by the state of your clothes we will end at the hospital anyway."

Sam pressed her lips, leading the way straight out of the office. It wasn't as if she wasn't cold, wet to the bones and the warmth from the fireplace hadn't made those two things worse now that she was no longer near it, but—

"I just came back from . I dropped Helena there," she informed. "It is raining in case you haven't noticed."

She looked back in time to see David giving her an odd look. A very odd look. And then follow behind her, lights being turned off with his elbow.

"Where do you want these?" Sam queried, once he was back in the parlor. "Lab?"

"The center table is just fine."

Sam raised her eyebrows, attention following David as he lowered the books to the floor next to the armchair he had been sitting at and picked the one that was on top, immediately starting to read it.

"You aren't going upstairs?"

That hadn't been the most sensible thing to ask, Sam suddenly remembered. Mrs. Dalton words when she had first arrived here, about David not sleeping at night, however, only hit her after David's own reply did.

"What for?" he said, quietly, bitterly, and turning back to her. "You will go to the University's Archives tomorrow and bring back Angela's student enrollment files. I want to look at them at the shortest possible notice."

Sam frowned.

"They won't give me those," she reminded David, taking the opportunity to lower the books to the center table. "They wouldn't when they thought I was a student. They will even less now."

David had returned his attention to the book.

"They have been informed you will be there to pick the files," he said. "Even if I am rather sure you would be able to get them regardless of that."

Sam would take that as a compliment. For the sake of not being embarrassed out of her mind, that was. And so, seeing David's attention disappear into the book, Sam said a very quiet "Goodnight" to him and began making her way to the door.

She had just stepped back into the atrium, however, when she was called back inside.

"And Sam—"

Sam took a step back, stopping with the door handle still under her fingers, to find David standing next to the armchair.

"I will pretend I didn't see that rabbit peeking from inside your bag," he said, looking at her from over the book. "Disappearing in the middle of the night without informing anyone, without even stopping to consider how worried I—people would be, is hardly what I call a good start."

And he sat, going back to the book, while Sam stood at the door staring at the back of the armchair. It would be only when she was back on her room, lying on her bed, Houdini right at her side, that she would manage to put two words together again.

"David—" she said while frowning at Houdini. "He said he would be worried, didn't he?"

Sam didn't remember the last time anyone had said that to her.

* * *

Author's Notes: I have no idea if there is anyone in this fandom, but if there is (or if you just stumbled upon this fic and decided to give it a chance) thank you for reading.


	2. Chapter 2 - Overcome

**Overcome**

The alarm went off on the bedside table, the morning program's upbeat music dancing its way to fill the silent bedroom before a professional male voice cut through the notes and David turned on the bed, searching for the old-fashioned digital clock and pressing its top button.

It was 8 AM, the display informed, too early by anyone's Saturday morning standards. So early, by David's own, he could feel the inside of his head crackling like fireworks as he pulled the bed sheets from over him and sat, the light peeking from the other side of the heavy red curtains to his left making him hiss when it hit his eyes.

"_Damn it—_"

David had know when he had retired at 6.30 AM last night—or should he say _this morning—_ that setting the alarm for a mere hour and half later would be a mistake. He didn't sleep well in the best of days and, _unsurprisingly_, having a ticking time bomb right next to his ears pressing him to do so didn't help in the slightest. Nor, he might add, had the books Sam had helped him take out of his old office. In fact, as far as the books went, David had cut through half an extremely dry lecture on "Intercellular Signal Transduction" before his mind had started to shut down and even after that, after dragging himself upstairs and into the bedroom, he had laid on the bed, wide-awake for so long he was unsure how much time he had actually slept, except—

"Clearly not enough," David mumbled in resignation.

And that would be it. A simple acknowledgment of what was an inevitable daily occurrence followed by him getting out of bed and into the shower. Like every other morning. Or it would have been like every other morning if David hadn't found his attention being called to the corridor beyond his bedroom's closed door. A door had just been closed outside. The sound of heels was echoing on the corridor's wooden floor and then moving down the stairs. Some moments later, he could hear the kitchen door being opened on the ground floor and Sam's high-spirited "Good morning, Mrs. Dalton" filling the house. It made him shake his head. How Sam was able to be this lively this early in the day—

David sighed.

"Come on get up."

His feet sank into the carpet on his side of the bed, soft fabric giving way to cold hard floor as David approached the large window to the balcony and pulled the red curtains wide-open. The bright morning light entered the room, washing over books and notebooks and the many other things that contrary to those were not his but Laura's, before David reached for the balcony door and pulled it open.

A shiver went down his back as he stepped outside, the cold October breeze hitting his naked chest making David shiver, then sigh. Last night's storm had left a visible mark on the estate. A large broken branch was even now lying over the garage's roof, snapped twigs and leaves were all over the manor's driveway, the back garden—He didn't dare look there, not now, not when the balcony itself had taken a beating and he was being forced to go around the puddle left there, to walk around it so he could reach the stone parapet, lean over it and, in what had become an automatic gesture by now, hide the right side of his face with his hand.

David hadn't stepped into this balcony in three years. Standing out here, taking in the night sky, a glass of wine in hand, all of that had lost its meaning without Laura. And to be honest, standing here _now—_just like going to Timmon's Park some days ago, searching for what little was left of her—only served as a reminder the world had continued on, that time kept at its unrelenting march forward, that it cared nothing for those it left behind—or for those who chose to stay with them. Timmon's Park had changed. The river Laura had loved so much had dried out. The trees had grown. And change was true even here at Dread Hill, David had only never cared to look outside to see time pressing at the walls, to notice it had forced it's way inside long before it sent Sam crashing through the front door.

"It was two days ago," Stella had said and David thought those words would haunt him forever. "I was making your bed. I saw… Well, I thought I saw a woman in the mirror on the dresser."

David rose his eyes from the overgrown trees to his left, from the painfully neglected back garden, and on to the old tower right in front of the balcony, to the window overlooking his bedroom and then behind him, inside the bedroom itself, towards the mirror that stood on the opposite wall, and that same tower reflected there.

God, how blind had he been? How had he not seen this? How was it possible that it had never crossed his mind that the woman in the mirror could have been in the tower? How much had he wished it to be Laura that he had closed himself of to every other possibility? How much had he wished her to be here that he listened to nothing else?

Desperately, a side of him answered. _Desperately._

And for a moment, for a magical, hope-filled moment, he had thought Laura was here. He had believed the woman appearing from this very balcony, stepping into the room, wearing Laura's white dress, looking so much like her, was Laura. He believed that by sheer power of will he had brought her spirit back. And, if Sam hadn't come running after him all the way from London, he would probably still believe that. He would be here right this moment believing Angela was Laura. He would be living in that lie, happily living in that lie, until—

The sound of the garage door being pulled up spared David having to finish that thought. It spared him from delving straight back into this never ending stream of horror inducing scenarios that lead nowhere and that didn't matter anyway for they weren't real, for reality was standing right beneath the balcony.

And reality wasn't Angela. It was Sam.

She was pulling that over the top ugly bike of hers out of the garage, sitting on it, fighting against the wind to get a map of Oxford open and, looking down to the manor's driveway, David didn't know what was in any of that made him want to smile.

_Silly, _he thought, before he made his way back inside the room, in his retreat blind to Sam stealing a glance his way, to her smile right before leaving—if not in anyway _blind_ to the rabbit, _her rabbit_, as it stood happily sprawled right in the middle of his bed!

_"How?!"_

David would end up dropping Houdini back in its cage before heading downstairs. Or he would do _that_ after taking a bath, dressing himself and telling the damn thing to stop following him around. In the end, however, Sam's comment about the rabbit having a tendency of "sort of appearing" actually made him go back to make sure the door to her room was closed and the rabbit inside at least three times before making his way to the kitchen. Unsurprisingly, upon getting there, he found Stella standing near one of the white counters, cutting vegetables, gray hair tied up as always and wearing an apron—not to say a smile once she turned to find it was him who had made his way inside.

"You are up early," she greeted and at that David had to scoff.

"Yes, and I'm regretting it already," he retorted, sitting at the kitchen's center aisle, back to pressing his still crackling head in his hands. As bear-like as Stella nevertheless thought his answer was she refrained from hitting him over the head with it like so many times before. That or she never even heard him. She was still smiling as she made her way to the sink, to wash her hands, one of the kitchen's cloths being taken from its hanger for her to dry them.

"Tea and toast?" Stella offered.

"An aspirin would be better."

David shouldn't have said that. He shouldn't have said it. The words had but to leave his lips and Stella had dropped tea pot and bread and crossed the kitchen in mother-like fury to get to him.

"I hope to heavens, you didn't catch your death last night!" she scolded while holding one hand against David's forehead. "Going out into that storm without a jacket, if I catch you running a fever, David Styles, I—!"

David sighed, watching Stella's lips turn into a thin line as she stood with his head in her hands. It was back to being 7 then, and he might have tried to get away from this, he _might_, if infancy hadn't taught him one thing above all others: there was no winning against Stella. He hadn't stood a chance with her when she was on her thirties, he stood even less of a chance with her in her sixties.

"It's just a headache," David ended up saying.

And it turns out aspirins were all passed their expiration date in this house, which meant—

"I will ring up Sam to buy some before she gets back," Stella said while walking from the house's pharmacy to the sink, kettle being filled with running water. "She has already left for the university."

"I saw it."

"She is staying with us, then?"

Closing his eyes, fingers going to press them, David sighed.

"I thought that was sufficiently clear without me having to spell it out," he said.

"Well, it wasn't clear," Stella replied, sternly, and even with his eyes closed David could see her closing the tap, making the way back to the oven, kettle being put to the flame, and then turning back to him.

"Still," Stella went on to say. "I'm very glad you decided to let her stay."

There was no way those words wouldn't have made David shake his head.

"You might be gladder to know I stopped her from hitting the road last night," he commented, fingers starting to run distractedly down the edges of the mask hiding his face. "Right in the middle of that storm."

Stella's voice become quieter.

"She was leaving, then?"

David blinked, attention jumping up to find Stella with her back to him and cutting bread over the far off counter, the last of an extremely generous pile of slices being put inside the toaster.

"You don't sound surprised," David pointed out and at those words Stella shook her head.

"I thought Sam was acting strange," she said and she turned, walking up to stand on the opposite side of the center aisle David sat at. "Sad. Looking at everything in this house like she was trying to bind it to memory. It crossed my mind we might wake up one day and she would be simply—_gone_."

David might have been stunned into silence. In any other situation he would have been. In this—

"What is it with _everyone_ in this blasted house and not telling me anything?!" he snapped.

"Well, forgive me if I thought you were behind it!" Stella immediately hit him with. "After all that song and dance about not wanting Sam in the house and telling me not to get attached to her and—"

Stella stopped herself abruptly, eyes dropping to the floor, voice turning into a whisper.

"_Other things._"

"Laura's appearances, you mean," David offered, ruthless. "Angela."

"That girl, yes," Stella confirmed, discarding all the rest. "You were so beside yourself when you found out Sam was not a student, I thought you might have said something to her to leave her in that state."

The toaster catapulted the toasts a few centimeters up in the air and straight into the cutting board behind Stella. Instead of turning and getting back to work, however, she stood there looking at him—and, as it would seem, straight through him and into that vein of guilt that had just made David start massaging his forehead.

"_What_ did you tell her?" Stella demanded to know, arms crossed.

"It doesn't matter."

"What did you tell her, _David Styles?!_"

"I might have threatened to call the police."

Stella seemed to know it wasn't just that by a long shot.

_"And?"_

"I might have told her something to the lines of not wanting to see her face ever again."

"David!"

"I thought it was _her!"_ David snapped. "Those pranks going on at campus, what happened in the cafeteria—What else was I to _think?!_ Sam had the knowledge and the opportunity, I—!"

David brought himself to a stop, attention stopping for a moment in the crockery in the shelves right over Stella before he pressed his lips at himself. Enough with the justifications. There was no justifying his behavior.

"I jumped to conclusions," he told Stella. "And it doesn't matter, it's solved."

"You solved it last night," Stella pointed out making David go straight on his chair.

"It never crossed my mind it wasn't solved before!"

"When not even I understood that, David, no one—"

Stella snapped a hand over her mouth. She had gone far enough though. David was staring at her.

"You—" he stammered. "You honestly thought me ungrateful enough I would toss Sam out when it was Angela—?"

Stella had thought it. He could see it in her face. She had thought it. And now David truly had been struck silent. Sam standing with her back to the fireplace last night, her expression once she had stuck her head inside his office, asking if she could stay, that rabbit peeking from her bag, she—

Aggravation swept over David like a roaring flame, he was on his feet now. On his feet and pacing, a note of anger to his voice.

"What on earth do you two think I am?!" he snapped. "Sam might have been the second person I managed to make cry in less than—forget twenty four hours, it was less than three, you should seriously reconsider releasing me back into society, Stella—but I am not that heartless!"

The hand Stella had been covering her lips slipped away, fondness making its way to her eyes.

"That was never the problem with you," she agreed, walking along the kitchen to take the butter out of the fridge. "But having a kind heart, a quick temper and awfully thin skin is never a good thing, David!"

David rolled his eyes, still pacing.

"Life-changing advice as ever, Stella."

Stella shook her head at the sarcasm, going back to the toasts, a glance being given to the place David was now at, standing near the small table by the window and looking out to the overgrown back garden.

"How did you manage to convince Sam to stay?"

_Convince?_ David had to snort at Stella's choice of words.

"I didn't _convince_ her," he remarked, looking back to her. "God knows Miss Everett doesn't seem liable to be talked into anything by nothing short of a cataclysm befalling all of us."

Stella raised her eyebrows at him from the other side of the kitchen. It made David sigh.

"She wanted to stay," he informed in a quieter tone. "God knows why she would."

Stella rolled her eyes, a very piercing gaze being given at him before she went back to spread butter on the toasts.

"That poor girl," she mumbled.

"_What?"_

"I never said!"

"You clearly _thought_," David replied, but the kettle beginning to whistle like an out of control locomotive right that moment rendered any sort of conversation impossible. In fact, it rendered David incapable of remaining in the kitchen, he was out in the atrium, Stella's—

"David, the food!"

—becoming lost to him as he made a sharp turn to the left and opened the door to the basement.

A cold blast of air hit his face right when David stepped through the threshold and the lights went on, shinning a pale white glow over what looked more like a dungeon than a basement. Stone heads looked down at him from high up the walls, the sound of dripping water echoed in the distance, the smell of the dust hanged over everything. Going down the stairs, David stopped for a moment to gaze at the wine racks.

He really should donate all the bottles that were stored here. It made no sense keeping them if he had no intention of ever touching them again. He should probably also clean-up the lab he had just opened the door to. The sheer amount of things that were still lying around despite Sam having tidied-up most of his files was overwhelming—but not a concern for today. In fact, walking by the filing cabinet and the MRI equipment, going to sit at the computer that stood at the entrance to the round chamber where he had conducted his last experiment, David had disappeared into his work the same moment the computer jumped to life. Angela's brain scans, the university newspapers, more neurobiology books than he could count, all were held against each other as he sank deeper and deeper into conjectures, theories, all of those things where he would have stayed for hours… if something being laid on top of his head hadn't forced him to make his way back. To turn on the chair. To find Sam standing behind him, arm outstretched and with a small pile of papers being unapologetically held over his head.

"It is certainly not that hard to give me those _normally_, Miss Everett," David snapped, Sam still holding the papers in place, making his lips curl. "_Sam._"

A mischievous smile went over her face despite David's wintry tone, papers now being put on his hands.

"It wouldn't have been 'that hard' if I hadn't been standing here for the last half an hour trying to get your attention," Sam told him right before pointing at the other end of the lab, towards the table right by the entrance and the food tray she had clearly left there. "Also, Mrs. Dalton asked me to bring that down. It must be cold by now. Do you want to heat it up or something?"

Already halfway down Angela's enrollment files or, in other words, the sheets Sam had given him, chair being turned back to the computer, David gave her words a dismissive wave.

"Take it back to the kitchen. I'm not hungry."

Sam didn't bat an eye.

"Mrs. Dalton warned me you would say that," she pointed out from behind him, her footsteps echoing in the lab's stone walls. "She said: you have to eat—"

A sneeze put an end to Sam's best take at Stella's scolding tone. A tone with which, David might add, she was doing such a good job with that their present conversation was threatening to turn into a broken phone kind of scenario between him and Stella. Or it would have, if he didn't know Sam well enough by now to know he was going to get stuck in an argument with her, instead of with Stella, if he even tried to start such a thing here.

That sneeze, however, brought all that could have been to a halt. David made his chair turn away from the computer and the journals and his notes and by doing so he found Sam standing to his right, right at the entrance to the lab's main chamber, back against the beds and medical equipment, hands on her hips.

"It is _not_ a cold," she protested before he could even speak.

"Of course not," David retorted. "It just has the same symptoms."

"I thought David Styles was a neurobiologist," Sam replied, eyebrows raised. "Not a general practitioner."

"It overlaps."

Something trembled in Sam's expression. Laughter. Not that it ever made it cross her lips. Not that she allowed it to. Not that she needed to for David to be left staring at her.

"It doesn't, right?" he heard Sam ask, clearly just to be sure. "Those two. They don't overlap."

"No."

"Figures," she whispered with a chuckle and, this time, David got up before she noticed he was still staring, before she could conclude he hadn't known he could still make someone laugh, before she concluded he had given up on that too when Laura had left. He got up, made his way to the lab's entrance, took the cup of tea that was on the tray—it was lukewarm but it would do—and made his way back to put it in Sam's hands.

"Drink that."

Sam was left looking between the dark concoction and him.

"This is _yours,_" she whispered.

"And you obviously need it more than I do."

She blinked, bringing the cup closer to her chest, bringing it so close she seemed to be hugging it.

"I—" She visibly swallowed. "_Thank you._"

Sam said that so quietly David doubted he would have heard it if he hadn't been standing right in front of her. He wouldn't lie and say he didn't think that strange. Of all the things he had noticed about Samantha, the main one was that she wasn't meek or timid by any stretch of the imagination. Quite the contrary. And yet, she was all but hiding behind the tea cup right now. Eyes on its dark contents. Standing in front of him like she hadn't been given anything in her life. Practically jumping out of her skin when David reached to touch her shoulder.

Odd.

And odder still was how quickly Sam seemed to recover. Rapidly retreating into the chamber behind her, going to sit on the closest of the medical beds, slightly hunched over, softly blowing the tea. David had just gone back to sit at the computer, when she found her voice.

"By the way, David—"

He looked up from the book he had just picked up in time to see Sam reaching inside her corset—today, it seemed, she had gone for a red one—and take a green and white box from inside. A gesture from him and she had tossed it his way, watching the aspirin box as it fell on his hands, frowning when David opened it.

"Are you feeling sick or something?" Sam asked and, truly, if she had followed Stella's footsteps and come to hold a hand against his head—and Sam seemed exactly the type to do it—David swore he would have fled for cover someplace where none of the two could get him. Which probably meant his private lab. God knows he was probably not safe there either and would get out to find Stella and Sam waiting to ambush him just outside the door.

"Headache," David therefore informed. And why, why did he have to continue? "I have my head crackling like its your 4th of July."

Sam looked at him over the tea she was sipping. Concerned.

"That doesn't sound good."

It wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination. That, however, wasn't saying it wasn't normal given how little he had slept. Still, Sam was studying him from behind deep blue eyes, frowning, lips parting and David should probably dedicate himself to divination because—

"It has nothing to do with last night!" he snapped.

"Well, you were sitting in the freezing cold!" she tossed back.

And now they were glaring at each other. David while sitting on the computer, Angela's student enrollment files over his legs. Sam seated in one of the medical beds with her cup of tea. Both getting more aggravated by the second, which was a complete idiocy no matter how one looked at this and, for once, David was the one to actually back away.

"Go ahead and tell me to put on a jacket next time, will you?" he snapped and truly, it was a very good thing neurobiology PhDs didn't offer a front row seat into reading anyone's brain for, otherwise, David wouldn't be seeing Sam turn as red as a beet and inhaling half her tea, he wouldn't be running to rescue her, the mug and the lab itself from the flood. He wouldn't have stood next to Sam staring wide-eyed and bewildered at her half-coughed:

"Please, don't put on a jacket."

No. He would be seeing himself through her eyes this very morning. Stepping out into his room's balcony. Leaning over the stone parapet. Dark hair caught in the cold morning breeze. Light washing over him. He would be here looking at himself—_shirtless_.

"Honestly," David whispered, the extension cord he was fighting to get away from the spilled tea with his foot—courtesy of holding a mug in one hand and running the other up and down Sam's back—getting momentarily ignored in favor of Sam's ongoing cough. "Are you even alright?"

David's only answer was a nod. A nod, more cough and—

"You don't mind that I call you David, do you?" Sam managed to say while being given back the mug, her change of subject so abrupt, David, now dropping for the extension cord, was left blinking.

_"What?"_

"You don't mind I call you _David_," Sam repeated, her clear intention of jumping down to help being cut short by a wave for her—and more importantly the mug—to stay put. "I started calling you that after you fired me in London. I thought it didn't matter anymore." Sam stopped for a moment, looking around the lab, voice dropping to a relieved whisper. "_But I'm still here._"

David glanced up. Above him, sitting, head leaned against one hand, Sam frowned at him.

"Do you mind I call you David or not?"

"If I did mind it," David retorted. "I would have made it clear already."

He got up with those words, the extension cord being put safely over the same medical bed Sam was sitting on.

"Furthermore," David stated, making his way back to the computer. "I'm under the impression you and the entirety of the Lamb's Club have been doing it since the beginning."

Sam tilted her head, taking a sip from what little remained of the tea. Thinking.

"Harvey calls you Styles," she informed after a moment, the odd cough still shaking her. "Charles and Malik don't give an inch on Dr. Styles, though."

David glanced Sam's way, his expression such she rolled her eyes.

"Look, you can hardly blame me and Helena for the David-thing," she said, unapologetic. "You are not exactly what comes to mind when anyone thinks 'Oxford Professor'."

Had David not put an extremely heavy book over his legs just now he would have jumped to his feet. Things being as they were, however—

"What is that supposed to mean?!" he growled. It gained him little more than a sigh.

"That you are young," Sam spelled it out, while distractedly starting to curl a lock of her dark hair around her finger. "When I got here I thought you were going to be ancient."

"Ancient," David repeated, still aggravated. "And that I'm not, apparently, makes it perfectly acceptable to blame me for—How did it go? Not being what comes to mind when one thinks 'Professor'?"

Sam smiled.

"You always sound like one, though," she whispered, starting to rotate the mug in her hands. "Are you really not going to eat?" she asked after a while, her tone one of concern. "If you go on like this you will skip right to dinner. It's the middle of the afternoon already."

David hadn't noticed. But then again—and at this his attention slipped to the lights hanging from the ceiling, to the dark gray walls, to the absolute lack of windows in the chamber—Hadn't that been why he had locked himself in here the last three years? To escape time?

"I'm not hungry," David ended up stating and if only he was not getting the distinct feeling Stella had told Sam about him skipping breakfast—

He got up that same moment.

"Come with me."

The order took them both out of the lab and into the large chamber outside. The key to his private lab being taken out of his pocket, David guided the two of them towards the large grates cutting this part of the basement from the rest of the vaults and stopped near the door to his private lab, opening it, guiding Sam inside. Or, at least, so David thought he had done for when he looked back, expecting to find Sam somewhere behind him, he instead ended up having to search for her. He found still standing outside.

"What are you doing?" David asked, facing her as she stood at the threshold, arms crossed, the wine rack behind her.

"Can I enter?" she asked, tilting her head at how sharp David's eyes immediately got.

"What _else_ am I towing you around for?"

Sam ignored the tone of his voice, entering the lab while looking around. Her eyes, unsurprisingly, fell on the machinery to her right.

"That is an isolation tank," David clarified while making his way behind the desk. Sam's curiosity, however, was clearly not satisfied. She was still with her back turned to him, facing the tank, curious.

"What is it used for?"

A weight sank into David's stomach, attention on the contents of the metal drawer he had just opened.

It was better she didn't know the answer. It was better no one knew the answer. Even if David suspected it would take Sam about five seconds to reach the same conclusion Stella had long figured out.

Laura.

This… _Everything_ had been for Laura. For this desperate hope she might still come back. That he might still be with her. He had spent three years not caring about what anyone thought of that, but now—

David raised his eyes from the drawer, rising back up with several carefully folded newspapers in hand, to look at Sam, to find her inspecting the tank's controls.

—now, for some weird reason, he did care. And above all, he couldn't stand to think Sam would come to look at him just like Stella did. With too much concern, too much compassion, too much _everything_. Maybe he just didn't want to find himself looking into those deep blue eyes and find Sam thinking he might break.

"Take these up," he instructed the moment Sam turned away from the isolation tank and back to him. The journals David had on his hands were immediately given to her. "I want you to find anything you can about what happened in the cafeteria some days ago."

Looking at the pile of newspapers and then at him, Sam frowned.

"Hadn't you talked with the police?" she pointed out.

"Chief-Inspector Paiser was not as helpful as I would wish," David admitted, arms crossed. "Go to St. Edmund, find the students who were on the cafeteria that day. Ask them where exactly they were, what they heard, what they saw, I want every detail they can remember."

Going over the journal in her hands, Sam didn't seem all that sure.

"Do you really want me to do this?" she asked to David's surprise.

"You have proven yourself good with people."

Sam shook her head, frowning at the newspapers, then at him.

"I didn't mean the interviews. I meant strolling back into St. Edmund Hall when nearly everyone there knows I forged a student ID to get inside," she said, sensibly. "I doubt that gives me any credits."

David might have laughed. He would if he still remembered how to.

"_Credits?"_ he nevertheless scoffed. "There are probably entire groups of students getting outright drunk while celebrating your feat!"

Sam raised her eyebrows:

"_Really?"_

David didn't have any doubts whatsoever. But that mattered little. Sam's troubles would be of another nature.

"In regards to problems," David went on to say. "I expect my shinning reputation will cause you more trouble than before. I doubt things have gotten better after one of my students actually died."

It was like he had disturbed a volcano. Standing on the other side of the desk, the isolation tank on her back, at first listening, attentive, Sam all but exploded:

"Angela was not your fault!"

And it was touching. Her outrage. And yet, it was entirely misplaced. Angela… If it wasn't for him, if he had listened to her three years ago, if he had helped, if it wasn't for that one mistake—

"_David."_

A hand closed over his arm and David rose his eyes to find Sam was now standing on this side of the table, right at his side, eyes shimmering, trying to bring her point across by sheer force of will.

"It is not your fault," she said.

David wished he could believe her. He truly wish he did, but—

"You are clear on what your assignments are?" David instead said, the words taking him out of the private lab, Sam in tow. Looking at his side as he turned the key, he could still see something strange on the way Sam was looking at him—before she completely shut it out.

"I won't have this ready tomorrow," she put forth, newspapers now under her arm, voice echoing on the stone walls, the distant sound of dripping water mixing with her words. "Just so we are on the same page."

"We are on the same page."

"Also," Sam continued, head tilted, her sharp tone making David stop before disappearing inside the main lab. "It would be easier if you told me what you are looking for."

Yes, he supposed it might.

"Patterns," David clarified. "Repetitions. Anything that ties all of these happenings together. That can help me understand how Angela's brain worked now that she isn't here."

"Understood."

David frowned, watching Sam read the journal that was on top with deeply knitted eyebrows. Yes, he was rather sure she did, that he could trust this to her, and so David was back to work, back to the main lab, back to getting so lost in his work he didn't notice time fly by until the smell of meat and vegetables reached his nose and David looked to his side.

There was a tray over the stool to his left that hadn't been there prior and he had but to move, to lean back to see if there was someone in the lab, to feel something slip from his shoulders, to reach back to grab it and find himself with the red blanket from the parlor on his hands.

Sam. This had Sam written all over it. But he hadn't noticed she had been here again. He hadn't noticed any of these things arriving. And for a moment David stood silent. Watching the white steam rise over the plate. Hearing Sam's footsteps as she went up the basement stairs. Feeling a soft warmth slowly settling around him.

"Silly," David whispered to himself, a glance at Laura as she stood on the photo he had put over the computer making him sigh in defeat. "Don't you start too."

Laura didn't answer, lately, she no longer did. And yet, putting the tray over his legs, picking up knife and fork, taking a pick at the peas, David couldn't help but feel she was standing with Sam on this.

"Three against one," David grumbled, eyes going back to Angela's enrollment files even as he ate. "Obviously, I don't have enough trouble."

Had David known what laid in wait, he might have refrained from saying that.

* * *

**Author's Notes**: A big thank you to **ReminiscentLullaby** for reviewing this one :)


	3. Chapter 3 - Misgivings, part 1

**Misgivings **(Part 1)

The _Vaults & Garden Cafe_ was just across the street from the Bodleian Library; cozy, old fashioned and elegantly tucked away behind the walls of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin and the trees and bushes of its garden, it might have gone completely unnoticed was it not for the many boards pointing the way, the delicious smell coming from inside and the never ending lines of people waiting to make their order.

Having found this place on one of the many occasions she had made her way to the library, Sam had once or twice stopped by the cafe to grab a bite, the rather tasty food more than justifying her visit, even if her past investigations and solving of Daedalus Club riddles had never truly allowed her to take in the space.

Today, however, it was different. Sat at one of the tables on the cafe's well kept garden, her backpack leaning against her chair, and with a pot of tea and a generous selection of scones in front of her, Sam was taking her chances with the cloudy weather for a chance to sit outside, the odd droplet of water hitting her skin and the notebook she was reading doing little to shake her resolve to stay right here, away from the crowds — even if the crowds were probably the wise ones for taking cover inside.

November had arrived at Oxford with biting cold and a truly downcast weather, the rain that punished the city more often than not giving way to small periods of calm that seemed to aim at nothing more than catch the more optimistic unprepared and drench them to the bones. Still, even if Sam was testing her luck with the British weather, it was pleasant to sit outside. Here, she could feel the cold wind hit her face, watch ripples go through the trees to her right, hear the rustle of leaves mixing with the voices of the students and tourists going by, and all of this while reaching out for the scones in the plate in front of her, biting into the soft sweet pastry and going back to the notebook and the many annotations she had filled it with.

In all honesty, when she had told David she wouldn't have the information on the cafeteria's events _tomorrow_ it had never crossed her mind that 'tomorrow' actually meant three weeks. It also hadn't crossed her mind just how difficult it would be not to get doors slammed in her face or that convincing people to talk with her would require another of her very underhand plans. Not that Sam was complaining. In fact, her present plan was one Sam was rather proud of, even if the scheming part of it relied for the most part on the tall, blond, young man who was now struggling to get passed the crowd queuing at the _Vaults & Garden Cafe _entrance, a young man that went by the name Charles Ettington and who — despite having spent the last week fulfilling his role in Sam's plan rather diligently, even if he was even now coming down the garden path, walking by several empty wooden tables with a food tray to get to where Sam was enthusiastically waving at him — still looked rather unsure about his role in any of this.

"You took your time, Homer," Sam teased once he reached the table, her playful tone being meet by one of Charles' usually quiet answers.

"Sorry," he said, pointing her attention to the cafe's entrance and the long queue slowly moving inside. "It is really crowded and I am starving."

Attention falling on the tray Charles had just put over the table, what seemed to be the _Vaults & Garden_'s Venison with Roasted Roots not so much peeking from inside the plate as overflowing from it, Sam raised her eyebrows.

"I can see that."

Charles' university bag slid from his shoulder going to rest on the cement slab next to the table and Sam's own backpack. As gravity would have it, however, the instant the bag hit the floor it fell, the stream of university books and pens and, unsurprisingly, Charles' copy of the _Iliad, _coming from inside, forcing Charles to leave the food over the table and crouch to grab his bag.

"Are you really sure you need me?" Charles asked now, the hunt for his belongings making the top end of his body disappear under the table so he could pick a pen that had made its way to the grass near Sam's feet. "Because I feel I am just dragging us down."

Wind tossing her ponytail around and forcing her to press her hand to the notebook's pages, Sam looked down, under the table, and grinned.

"Don't worry, Charles, you being here is absolutely essential."

Pen now safe in his hand, books being carefully put back inside his bag, Charles looked up from his crouched position, a soft curiosity to his eyes:

"How?"

"You are my ticket inside half the rooms at St. Edmund!" Sam exclaimed and that same instant Charles' eyebrows jumped.

"Is that why we are only talking with _girls?!"_

Sam's ever growing grin seemed to be answer enough. Cheeks burning red, Charles went to sit opposite her, eyes firmly set on the food. His embarrassed silence — and then the clicking of cutlery as he started to eat — allowed Sam to lean back into her chair and, the low temperature forcing her to zip her short black jacket all the way up to her neck, go back to her notes.

Despite her unwavering good mood, Sam had her mind in a state of deep unrest, one that seemed to only get worse the longer she went over what those present during the incident at the cafeteria had to say. Just like it had happened back with the incidents at the track and pool, she couldn't shake this sensation there was something here that wasn't as it should, something—

Sam pulled her bangs out of her face, leaning closer to the notebook. A few seconds of going back and forth through several pages and she had stopped, eyes sharpening, the interview she had been searching for, one she had carried out just a pair of days ago, leading her all the way back to St. Edmund Hall's Graduate Wing, to standing on the dormitory's ancient corridors watching a slow procession of people with cardboard boxes go by her and waiting, waiting until she saw Charles' blond head, closely followed by the rest of him, coming down the stone stairway to the her right.

"I did what you said with the fuse box upstairs, I don't think anyone saw me," Charles shared once he stopped at her side, a very nervous expression being given to the university workers disappearing down the corridor with the boxes. "Where are we going?"

The answer to that question had been Room 128, a room belonging to a certain Anna Botting, a Medical Sciences student whose name had appeared in the newspapers in relation to the events at the cafeteria. Unfortunately, however, and contrary to many others whose names appeared attached to small interviews and statements, Anna hadn't gotten to the journals while aiming at a fleeting moment of fame. In fact, she hadn't gotten to the newspapers by choice at all. And knocking on the wooden door to her dorm room, hearing the unmistakable clicking sound of a medical cane breaking the rhythm of the uneven footsteps approaching the door, the reason why Anna was in the newspapers would have become clear to Sam even if she hadn't known it already.

Anna — who had just now unlocked her door and who stood on the other side, eyebrows drawing closer, right leg on a plaster cast — was one of the injured.

"You are the person inquiring about the cafeteria?"

What Anna Botting _also_ happened to be — and that left Sam staring at her, trying very hard not to gape — was the exact same young woman she had watched flee Dread Hill the night she had arrived at Oxford. David's original assistant. Blond haired. Brown eyed. An attractive face.

If for one moment Sam had thought Anna might recognize her too — that should be easy enough given Sam's personal style and tattoos, or so Sam thought — she was proved rapidly wrong. Studying her face, seeming to recall _something_, at least judging by how much she was frowning, Anna ended pushing her blond hair out of her forehead, attention jumping between Sam and Charles.

"So?" she prodded.

Slightly taken aback by this encounter, Sam had to force herself to smile and reach forward, right hand outstretched to shake Anna's:

"I'm the one with the questions," she confirmed. "My name is Samantha Everett, this is Charles. You must have seen him before."

Judging by Anna's lack of reaction it appeared she hadn't. More disheartening than having lost the upper hand on this, however, was that Anna hadn't moved an inch. She still stood at her door, completely blocking the way inside her brightly illuminated room. It gave Sam no other choice than to glance up and down the stone corridor running in both directions and turn back to Anna, smiling:

"Can we come in?"

A small moment of indecision, of looking at the hand Sam was still offering in greeting, and Anna stepped back into her room without shaking it. As uninviting as her behavior was, however, rather than slamming the door right in their faces like Sam feared she was about to do, Anna gestured inside, allowing a relieved Sam and a timidly smiling Charles to step passed the door frame and enter the room.

"Bring those if you want to sit," she spoke. The gesture that accompanied those words, pointing towards the white armchair and footstool that stood in the corner of the room, sent both Sam and Charles in that direction, curiosity making both take a discreet look around while Anna locked the door.

The room Anna occupied was not that different from most of the rooms Sam had visited in St. Edmund: a comfortable bed was pulled against the wall to the room's bathroom, a large bookcase occupied the wall beside it and a work desk rested under an ample window overlooking trees, green fields and old buildings. It was a room like all others. And, just like all other rooms at St. Edmund, what truly set it apart from its many twins was its occupant.

In Harvey's case his room's had held his movie supplies, posters and photos of famous directors.

Charles' room, on the other hand, was over-packed with games and mangas.

Angela, whose room already stood out by being shared, had had her fairies.

Helena—

Sam found herself shaking her head at the memory of entering her friend's room through the window over her door, mind projected right back to Helena's books, fashion posters and red underwear lying around. She honestly didn't know where to start with Helena's room.

In Anna's case, however, what wrote this room as hers, were books. Medical volumes mostly if Sam's quick glance at the ones on the bookcase behind the armchair were anything to go by. There were pictures on the bookcase too. The biggest of them, on an old-fashioned frame that had little in common with the modern look of the rest of the room, showed Anna standing alongside an old lady — her grandmother if the family resemblance was anything to go by. The one that captured Sam's attention the most, however, showed a pair of dogs, the white spotted Grand Danois to the left of his much smaller companion holding a ball in its mouth and supporting such a silly expression, Sam found herself with fingers pressed to her lips and fighting to suppress a snort. Suffice it to say, she failed. And she did it in such spectacular fashion, Anna, who was midway to the desk under the window, stopped, leaned into the medical cane for support and looked back.

"You like dogs?" she asked and, trying to lift the armchair, Sam looked back.

"Yeah," she chuckled, Charles easily taking the heavy piece of furniture from her hands and carrying it all the way to the room's desk, leaving her free to turn and talk with Anna. "But I don't think having a dog and a pet rabbit is the best idea."

A small smile later and, the clicking of the medical cane again filling the room, Anna made her way passed the large bookcase next to the bed, passed the armchair, and stopped at her desk. Turning the chair so she was facing Sam and Charles, sitting, she seemed less hostile now.

"Malik told me about your article," Anna commented, leaning her cane against the desk behind her. "I was under the impression the university didn't want more publicity. Won't you get into trouble?"

Looking Anna's way, a glance at the computer screen behind her showing Sam an academic paper Anna had no doubt been working on before she and Charles knocked on the door, Sam dropped the footstool right next to the armchair Charles had carried here, her expression serious.

"Think of it as an underground publication," she offered.

A pair of pale brown eyes ran up and down Sam's face, studying her, pondering. Whatever conclusion Anna reached, however, be it that she believed Sam or not, she kept it to herself, leaned back into her chair and spoke.

"What do you want to know?"

Sat at the _Vaults & Garden Cafe, _Sam felt a shiver go down her spine, the memory of Anna's watching her from her chair, of how difficult it was to read her quiet thoughts, of the way she kept herself to herself, leaving Sam's attention to wander to the rooftop of the Radcliffe Camera, the bluish dome that peaked over the trees to her right.

As much as 'what ifs' weren't something Sam liked to lose any time with, right now she couldn't help but ponder on the night she had arrived at Dread Hill and on the young woman that had gotten out of a taxi and started making her way to the dark manor. If Anna hadn't gotten scared and ran away, if she had been the one with David through all that had happened, or worse if Anna did run away and David ended up alone—

Sam's nails dug into the notebook, pressing into the pages filled with her own writing.

_If I wasn't there…_

If Angela was here, sitting in the cafe's garden with Sam, she would no doubt call it fate that Sam had gotten lost and arrived at Dread Hill when she did. Still looking up, however, seeing gray clouds rush behind the Radcliffe Camera's roof, Sam had to disagree once again.

She didn't believe in fate. In luck, perhaps. But not in fate. And so, running a hand through her black hair, the small droplets of water that were over it breaking under her gesture, Sam was back to her notes, back to Anna's room, back to Charles who, not interested in sitting despite the footstool, stood to Sam's left, right between the armchair she sat on and the bookcase, curious eyes running over Anna's many books.

"Can you tell me exactly what happened?" Sam now asked, opening her notebook over her legs. Anna's silence and the tapping of her fingers against the dark fabric of her skirt forced Sam to raise her attention from her notebook and to where Anna sat, her back to the room's window and her computer screen. "On the day of the incident on the cafeteria, when did you arrive there? Any idea of the time?"

Ana's brow lowered.

"I'm not sure about the time," she admitted in a low, firm voice, a grimace going through her face when, distracted, she tried and failed to cross her legs. "I was working on my thesis for most of the day, I would probably have remained here if my alarm clock hadn't rang."

Anna pointed at a digital clock on her bedside table with those words. Leaning over the armchair's left arm to find out Charles had already picked the digital alarm clock and was showing it to her, Sam reached inside her pocket, took her phone out and returned to Anna. She was leaning her head against her hand now, a slight frown still on her face.

"It's ten minutes ahead of the time," she confirmed and at that Sam returned to a more comfortable position on her chair, a sympathetic look being given to Anna.

"Is it always ahead of time or is it because—?"

Sam pointed her pen at Anna's leg, the implied question being met by a small head shake.

"I like to arrive early," Anna simply stated and put both her hands over her legs. "The day of the cafeteria incident I had a class at four and wanted to get some things done on the way there. It was probably not even 3.30 when I left."

Sam leaned forward, genuinely interested.

"How did you end up at the cafeteria?" she queried.

"I got sidetracked by a friend," Anna explained. "She wanted to talk, we went inside for somewhere to sit."

A nod and Sam pressed the top of her pen, readying herself to write.

"Did you notice anything odd when you entered?"

"No," Anna stated, the many hoops of her hearings clicking against each other when she shook her head. "Just the usual. People were studying. Talking. Everything was absolutely normal until—"

"Until?"

The clouds opened on the patch of sky behind Anna, the light coming from the window surrounding her in such a way her face was swallowed by darkness.

"You know what happened next," Anna remarked.

Sam blinked, attention jumping between Anna and the blank piece of paper on the notebook — a page where she had had no opportunity to write anything other than Anna's name. As much as having doors closed on her face didn't faze her in the slightest, this—

Sam traded a quick glance with an obviously out of his depth Charles, and sighed, the pen she held on her fingers being put over the notebook.

"Look," Sam put forth, going back to face Anna. "I'm sure you don't want to get into trouble with the university, and I get it. People must have told you not to speak about what happened a million times. But I must be honest with you. I'm not with _Ox Stu_. I'm not a reporter."

Sam would like to say Anna looked surprised by her admission, curious even. But, sat on her desk chair, the light around her fading when the sun was once again covered by clouds, she didn't. Not in any way.

"You aren't a reporter?" Anna nevertheless queried and her words hanged in the air, their implied question obvious to Sam.

"I was asked to conduct these inquiries to try to reconstruct what happened," she explained, careful as to hold Anna's gaze. "There have been some weird things going on at campus. You and the people at the cafeteria were not the first ones to witness something out of the ordinary—"

Sam stopped abruptly, the clear memory of David and Laura standing together next to a wall of blue tiles, of Angela's father looking back at her from the photograph on his daughter's room, bursting into her mind so suddenly Sam dropped her eyes to the white carpet under her feet, spirit heavy.

"You were not even the first ones to get hurt," she heard herself share and looked up, expression serious, honest, even if what she was about to say was, at it's best, an half-truth. "We just want to get to the bottom of what happened, to make sure this was just some freak accident, not some sick person's idea of a prank."

One of Anna's eyebrows rose over her square glasses, what could be interest making it's rounds through her eyes. Of all Sam had said, however, she seemed to have focused in one thing alone. On the smallest of details.

_"We?"_ Anna repeated and what she said next might just be the opening Sam needed. "Who are you working for? Are you with the University?"

It definitely was the opening she needed.

"My employer is."

_Kind off, _Sam finished in her head. That David was not conducting any inquiry for the university — that he was on leave — was really not important right now. What was important was that mentioning the university operated a change in Anna that was all together very different from the one her dogs had brought about. Whereas before she had ceased to be hostile, now her expression showed an hopeful eagerness that hadn't been there before.

"I'm going to kill Malik," Anna whispered, pressing both sides of her head. Was it not for her broken leg and the plaster around it forcing her to remain still, Sam was sure she would have gotten up and started to pace the room. "He could have told me the _truth!"_

And with that Anna straightened, eyes meeting Sam's.

"Ask whatever you want."

Sam could have sighed with relief, instead, however, she picked up her pen and put it over her notebook once again.

"Can we start from the beginning?"

They did. They went all the way back to Anna working on her thesis, to her alarm clock ringing and she going down the stairs to the dorm's atrium, meeting her friend and heading inside the cafeteria. And this time, rather than rushing ahead like she had been doing just now, Anna actually talked. And even if she hadn't been paying enough attention to her surroundings to be of much assistance, at the very least, what she did remember fell in line with what Sam had heard from all other people she had interviewed. On October 18th, the cafeteria at St. Edmund had been packed full despite it being the middle of the afternoon, most of those inside gathering there to talk with friends or discuss group projects, rather than eat. It seemed, by all accounts, to have been a rather unremarkable afternoon, until—

"They came out of nowhere," Anna spoke, the words seeming to have became stuck on her throat leaving her silent for a long moment, the very same fear that had been in Eddie's eyes after the lines had appeared on the track, that had made Kelly wish to leave campus upon seeing the pool turn red, now filling her eyes, leaving her with her attention stuck to the cast around her leg.

"One moment everything was normal," Anna forced herself to say, hands wrapping around the dark fabric of her skirt. "We were just sitting at the cafeteria, talking, Jess had put her bag on the table, she was searching for her phone, and then there was this—_Explosion_."

Sam's eyebrows jumped. Her attention snapping up, away from words scribbled on the white paper, she leaned forward, over her legs, over her notes, eyes narrow with suspicion.

_"Explosion?"_

Anna took a deep breath, the hand that had been wrapped around her skirt going to press her forehead.

"I think it was the table behind us breaking," she said, pushing her hair back while trying to remember. "It is difficult to be sure. I—I turned. I remember seeing half the table crashing against the wall, the other half was simply not there and the very next moment something hit this cabinet that was on the other side of the room and broke it apart. Everyone was fighting to get out of the cafeteria after that, screaming, trying to reach the door, and everywhere things kept breaking. I remember this huge painting falling from the wall and seeing this _head_ on the floor—"

Anna's hands closed around each other, her face going as white as the cast around her leg.

"It took me a moment to notice it wasn't real," she whispered. "I thought it was."

It was like a heavy blanket had been wrapped itself around the room. Pushing her notebook aside, Sam looked up. Anna's eyes were haunted. She didn't seem to be standing in the room anymore, but back in the cafeteria, fleeing, destruction raining around her. Before Sam could call her back, though, before she could ask Anna if she was fine — something she obviously wasn't — Charles had step from behind the armchair and somehow found the courage to speak.

"You were hurt," he put forth and just like when he talked about Homer, like when Sam had confronted him with David's article, Charles' voice lost its timid edge. "How did you get out?"

A pained expression in her face, Anna forced herself to come back to them.

"I didn't."

The silence was worse now than it had been just a minute ago. Leaving his attention to wander, Charles retreated behind the armchair again. The soft—

"I'm sorry"

—escaping his lips was, however, met with a gentle smile.

"I got lucky," Anna told him and let herself sink into her chair. For a moment she looked at the ceiling, at the lit ceiling lamp, then she closed her eyes.

"I don't remember being hit," she admitted in a tired voice. "Just that one moment we were all trying to get out, that people were pushing and shoving each other while everything broke, and then I opened my eyes and was lying on the floor. I didn't even notice I was hurt at first, only that it was just us there. The ones who couldn't get out. Everything had stopped, the cafeteria was completely destroyed, I could hear someone crying, and there was screaming coming from outside the room. Mr. Charles—" Anna opened her eyes, going back to face Sam and Charles. "He is the gentleman at the entrance — come running inside not a moment later. As did a lot residents, this huge crowd started to fill the cafeteria, everyone wanted to help, most had no idea how to. It took Mr. Charles forever to get campus security to get there and force people to leave."

Sam's eyes narrowed, the pen with which she had furiously been taking notes coming to a stop right at the middle of a page. Maybe it was the illusionist in her that was veering its head right now, but—

"Forever?" Sam inquired, brow furrowed. "Do you have any idea how long it was? Do you think it long enough for... say someone to take something out?"

Anna tilted her head, brow furrowed.

"I have precious little notion of how much time passed, but with that many people there, it wouldn't be hard. No."

A new note was written on her notebook. Rereading it, however, seeing the words _"possible misdirection. enough time to have projectiles removed"_ followed with a bunch of interrogation points, Sam felt an almost immediate need to cross it out.

_What was she doing?_ She knew who was responsible for this! So did David! And it was not an illusionist! What on earth was she—?!

"Who was there?" Sam blurted out while biting down her frustration at herself and at that note — a note she couldn't cross out right now least Anna grew suspicious. "I mean, who remained there after Mr. Charles got people to leave?"

Anna's answer came easily.

"Medical students mostly," she informed while trying to find a more comfortable position to put her broken leg in. "Also, this girl who is studying art. She was the one with me. Some time after that the paramedics arrived and so did the police."

Anna stopped for a moment, Charles having just picked up the footstool he had refused to sit in and put it in front of her, making her blink at him with surprise and then put her foot there, visibly relieved.

"Thanks," she told Charles and again looked at the ceiling light. Just like before she seemed to be trying to remember. A long moment went by until, finally, she shook her head.

"I don't think I'm much help after that point," she admitted, sounding genuinely regretful. "I was loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. Most of what I know from there on out, you can easily read on the newspapers."

Sam nodded and took a grounding breath. The now-back-to-standing-at-her-side Charles had heard what followed far too many times to still be caught by surprise by it. As for Anna what came next would no doubt sound weird. The thing was this, _this_ was what this entire interview was about.

"Some people think—" Sam started to say and she leaned forward, the memory of Anna fleeing Dread Hill, screaming at what turned out to be nothing at all, making her drop her voice until Anna too was, even if carefully, leaning in Sam's direction. "They _think_ it was something _paranormal_."

Anna's eyebrows jumped. She sat straight now, giving Sam a shocked look.

_"Paranormal?"_ she repeated, the trepidation that was in her expression, however, faded right away. Anna shook her head, fingers going to drum on the arm of her chair. "I didn't _dream_ any of that."

Had this loud crash not come from outside the room right that moment — what could only be one more of the many cardboard boxes Sam had watched being carried down the corridor having just fallen to the floor — so startling her she actually let her pen slip from her fingers, Sam would have felt Charles hand close over her shoulder, warning her of the way Anna's eyes had sharpened. Sam herself would no doubt have noticed how defensive her posture had just become. Seeing as Charles only grazed her shoulder, and Sam was kneeling on the floor and not looking up—

"Did you see them?" Sam asked, peeking under the armchair and stretching her fingers when she saw the pen nestled over the carpet. Coming back up, she found Anna still sitting, back to the window, and as guarded as she had been in the beginning of their conversation.

"I was _hit_ by one of those things," she retorted in a cutting tone. "I would say that makes them real enough."

Charles had visibly flinched just now. Stepping back, almost like he meant to drop and hide behind the armchair, he ended forcing himself to stop, refusing to leave Sam to fend for herself — something she was already doing, both her hands raised apologetically between herself and Anna.

"I didn't mean it like that," Sam said, trying to control the damage and going back to sit on the armchair. "I just wanted to know if you saw what they were."

It might be a bit late, however, to assuage Anna.

"They were large, round objects," she spoke, a note of coldness in her voice. "I have no idea what they were, only that they moved fast. I don't have to describe the state the cafeteria was in after they finished."

She didn't. Even if Sam hadn't seen it personally the newspapers David had given her had offered her a good idea of the chaos. In fact, taking her attention away from her notes, Sam only had to flick back through the pages to find one of the newspaper articles and look at the black and white photograph on top of it. If Sam didn't know better she might have thought a bomb had gone off in the cafeteria, the picture showed broken tables and destroyed artwork everywhere, huge gashes on the walls. What interested Sam, however, what interested David, the thing she had to get an answer to before she lost Anna completely, was—

"There is something I need to know," she put forth and at that Anna crossed her arms, defensive.

"And that is?"

The pen Sam had between her fingers tapped on the notebook.

"Some of the people I talked to mentioned seeing a shadow in the cafeteria," Sam said, eyes studying Anna's expression. "They also felt this weird heavy atmosphere, like a storm was approaching. Did you notice anything like that?"

Anna looked utterly bewildered.

"N-No," she stammered, eyes wide with confusion. "Who told you that?"

Which brought Sam back to the present_. _That thing she had shared with Anna, about people seeing a shadow, about the electrically-charged atmosphere, was a lie. No one had mentioned something like that. _Absolutely no one._ Not even when she had asked. And thinking about Eddie, about Jennie, about herself when she had locked herself in the weight room, and about David and Laura smiling, unconcerned, while a shadow watched hatefully over them, Sam couldn't help but go right back to her misgivings and to the reason why she was presently sitting at the _Vaults & Garden Cafe, _waiting, her good humor hiding an extremely heavy heart.

She wished for nothing more than to be wrong right now but—

A drop of rain crashed right into the page holding Anna's interview, turning some of the words into an unfocused blotch, blurring their meaning. Reaching out for the napkin she had stuck between her scone plate and the wooden table, Sam pressed it to the notebook, trying to dry it, trying to—

"Sam!"

The calling made Sam jump. Snapping her notebook shut, napkin inside, before she even looked to see who had spoken, Sam ended up turning on her chair and stretching her neck to see Helena enter the garden through a small metal door hidden behind the shrubbery and naked trees to the side of the cafe. Smiling, the long beige jacket she was wearing hugging her figure, Helena strode into the garden, going by empty table after empty table, her feet hitting the stones of the garden's path with ease, the sound of the rustling leaves mixing with her words.

"I wasn't expecting you to already be here, Sam! How long—?" Helena stopped, the warm smile she was giving Sam, freezing the very moment she looked to the other side of the table and found—

_"Charles,"_ Helena purred, seductively, and put her hands on the table, her expression changing drastically. "I wondered where you ran off to."

Having been left struggling with the small metal door he had opened to let Helena inside the cafe's garden, Harvey huffed in annoyance from the distance. The water that had been pooling over the garden's door now dripping from his hands, forced to reach inside his checkered-patterned coat for somewhere he could dry them, Harvey stopped right beside Helena, his timely arrival saving Charles from what didn't look so much like intelligent, vain but overall friendly Helena but a starved tigress in search of prey.

"You were really helpful back there," Harvey tossed at Helena, right hand pointing over his shoulder, at the garden's metal door beyond which a steady stream of people were walking by, his tone deeply sarcastic. "Thank you for helping me out."

Her attention diverted from Charles, Helena tossed her long hair over her shoulder.

"I thought _you_ were the one helping me," she stated, putting a ridiculously small handbag she couldn't possibly have anything in over the table. "Where have all white knights gone to?"

Harvey scoffed.

"I very much doubt you needed one to start with," he grumbled and looked at the table, rather than greeting Sam and Charles, however, his attention fell right on the plate of scones in front of Sam.

"Boy, do those look good!" he exclaimed, immediately making a grab for one of the muffins and getting his hand slapped away by Helena. "AU! What was that for?!"

"Get your own food," Helena remarked, hands on her hips.

"Oh, come on!" Harvey protested. "There is no way Sam is going to eat all of—!" Helena rose her eyebrows, the look she gave Harvey such he immediately backed down. "Right, right, I will jump inside."

Attention jumping back and forth between Harvey, now walking down the garden path to the cafe's entrance, and Helena, who was once again putting her hands on the table and leaning his way, Charles pushed his chair back and got to his feet.

"I'm going with him," he announced, scampering after Harvey.

Eyes following the retreating duo — or judging by the way he was sprinting to catch up to Harvey, the fleeing Charles — Helena let herself fall dramatically into the chair at Sam's side.

"I must be doing something very wrong with that boy," she sighed.

Reaching to get her backpack from the floor, putting it over her legs and opening it, Sam rose her eyebrows.

"Looking like you are about to pounce on him, perhaps?"

Sam's comment made Helena look away from Harvey and Charles, who, having walked the entire length of the garden, were now at the very end of the long queue making its way inside the cafe.

"You think I should change tactics?" Helena pondered, eyebrows raised, interest making her head go to rest over her intertwined fingers while she watched Sam put her notebook inside her backpack. "To play hard to get? To give him the — _How do you people say it?_ — the cold shoulder and strike when he gets so desperate he no longer knows what to do?"

Helena's expression turned cat-like at her own thought process, a friendly pat being given to Sam's back:

"Your plan is genius, goth girl!"

Sam blinked, notebook slipping from her fingers. Her—Wait just a second!

"I didn't get a single word out!" Sam protested—and was elbowed by a grinning Helena before she could continue.

Charles and Harvey were making their way back already, the second having clearly given up on "grabbing a bite" upon facing the slow moving queue. Now stopping at the head of the table, the look he gave the scones making Sam reach out to push the plate his way only to be, for the second time, elbowed by Helena — and, really, what was she grinning for? — Sam watched Harvey cross his arms.

"Is anyone missing?" he asked, looking around and trying to ignore the chair to Charles side, the one Harvey himself had left empty, a chair where an Angela-shaped absence seemed to have just appeared. "Are we all here?"

Hugging her beige coat closer around her, actually buttoning up so that, Sam could only conclude, the cleavage she had been proudly displaying disappeared from view, Helena took her attention up to Harvey.

"Malik _isn't,"_ she pointed out, she too keeping her attention as far away from the empty seat as she possibly could. "He is late."

Harvey looked back at the garden's two entrances, trying to see passed the shrubbery and to the dozens upon dozens of people walking by.

"The two of us were late," he retorted.

"That doesn't change anything, does it?" Helena stated, her hair getting caught in the wind, forcing her to grab it to stop it from flying in front of her face. "Late is late. _Also—_" She looked up, passed the mix of leaves and naked tree branches and towards the gray clouds overhead, the drop of rain that had just hit her hand leaving her clearly aggravated. "What is with this country and rain?"

Sam too looked up.

"I have been wondering about that too," she admitted and brought her attention down, the menacing dark clouds making her take a bag from inside the open backpack she still had over her legs and start to fill it with what was left of the scones.

"Can we get a move on?" Harvey queried from over them, the gray clouds clearly alarming him too. "I will phone Malik, find what hole he fell into, also—_Give me a break, Sam!_ Are you really going to eat all of those?!"

The four of them left the _Vaults and Garden_ shortly after. Harvey happily gobbling down on a scone while he talked to Malik on the phone, the soft rain that forced both the Lamb's Club and everyone walking down the streets of Oxford to open their umbrellas really not fazing him anymore — nor, Sam might add, Malik's absence, seeming as the last member of the now more or less assembled Lamb's Club was stuck at the Neurobiology Department, more exactly at his new job.

"Good for him!" Helena spoke, genuinely happy, once Harvey informed them of Malik's not so serious predicament, the red umbrella she had taken out of one of her jacket's pockets being opened over her and Sam's heads. "He has been running back and forth trying to find _something_ since that Linkweller-person tossed him out."

Guilt tugging at her heart, Sam gave the group — a group who had no idea that had been her fault — a strained smile.

"Yeah, it is great he found something," she agreed.

Her attention getting momentarily caught up on the fashion store they were now walking by, for a moment actually seeming to wish to follow the people entering it, Helena turned back to Sam, a curious expression in her eyes.

"So, why did you call us here?" she queried, the clicking of both her and Sam's high heeled boots joining the squealing of Charles and Harvey's tennis on the wet pavement. "It sounded urgent."

Dropping his phone inside his jacket's pocket, going to look over his left shoulder to where Sam and Helena were, Harvey nodded.

"Yeah, what was that about?" he jumped in, finally able to open his own umbrella rather than walk under Charles' one. "And why couldn't we do this down at St. Edmund's quad? You know, where there is a nice warm building we could all take cover inside?"

Sam looked around. There were old buildings on both sides of the pedestrian street they were walking down of, laughter and voices came out of the pub on the other side of the road, people tried to enter the many stores, no doubt trying to flee the rain. Even so, the street was still packed full. There were tourists taking photos of the buildings, students running to their classes, schoolchildren walking along with their parents — and all of that was good. It gave the four of them privacy.

"I need to get inside St. Edmund Hall," Sam informed, still looking around, watching the people around them. "After lock up."

Sam had talked in a mere whisper, Charles, Harvey and Helena on the other hand—

"You _what?!" _they exclaimed, all looking her way.

"What you heard," Sam groaned, gesturing at them to lower their voices. "And I need a hand."

The group stalled right there in the middle of the street, their brusque halt forcing the people walking behind them to an equally abrupt stop. Having rammed straight into Charles' back, Sam tossed her arms up, incredulous.

"What is wrong with the three of you?" Sam groaned, hands hitting the canvas of Helena's umbrella right as the entire group closed in a circle, a mix of raised eyebrows and thoughtful frowns being directed at her.

"Forgive us if we are a little shocked, dear," Helena said, looking at both Charles and Harvey who were nodding in agreement. "You are not one to ask for help."

Right to Sam's left, his back turned towards a window display filled with mannequins wearing winter clothes, people walking behind him, Harvey nodded.

"What she said," he put in while gesturing at Helena, who was right in front of him "Really, I thought if you were going to ask for help you would either go to Styles or to that nice old lady who works for him, _not us_."

Even if Harvey wasn't wrong, Sam had to roll her eyes.

"I can't ask David—" she started to say, only for Helena's all-knowing smile to make her clear her throat. "_Dr. Styles."_

His attention jumping between Sam and Helena, visibly having noticed the look that had just been traded between them but missing its meaning completely, Charles tilted his head.

"What is the problem with asking Professor Styles—?" he started and fell silent the same instant, the small 'Oh' crossing his lips, becoming lost amid the sound of splashing footsteps from the people around them and the rain falling on and from the umbrellas over their heads. Feeling water hit her left arm — something Sam should seriously become accustomed to when sharing a umbrella with Helena — Sam put the group on the move again, her boots sinking into the small puddles forming all over the dark sidewalk while they kept going down the street.

"It is not just that he is a professor," Sam now said, Oxford's old buildings going by the group. "I mean, sure I don't want to get David into trouble with the university, but main thing is I don't think he would like me getting inside St. Edmund Hall after hours."

Walking at Sam's side, Helena clamped her lips together, trying to suppress a chuckle.

"I don't think he will like to know you got there afterwards either, Sam," she ended up saying, her eyes twinkling with amusement at Sam's defensive expression.

"If I tell him afterwards he can do anything about it, can he?" she rebutted and again glancing at them Charles was left frowning.

"He can get mad," he put forward, clearly trying to be helpful and failing completely at it. It really wasn't as if Sam needed to be reminded of that particular — and very real — possibility.

"Dr. Styles seems to like obeying rules," Charles nevertheless continued. Walking to his side, Harvey chuckled.

"If you don't count his research, you mean!" he tossed right at them and looked over his shoulder, excited. "I found one of Styles' published books some days ago and boy oh boy was that a wild ride!" he told them, water running down his umbrella. "It was all about the brain's locked abilities! People must have thought he was nuts or something saying things like that! I mean, come on, it sounds insane! But now it turns out he might actually be right! That's some movie-worthy twist!"

Sam rose her eyes to the stormy sky above her, or, as things were, to the bright red canvas of Helena's umbrella and the water running down it. There would be a script on Harvey's desk in some days time. If there wasn't one there already.

"Can we get back on topic for a moment?" she sighed, trying to return some degree of somberness to the happily chattering group around her. "I really need your help. I won't be able to get locked inside since the doorman knows I am not a student. Same goes for hiding in one of your rooms. I simply can't go through the front door."

All laughter ceased. Harvey's eyebrows arched, a deeply suspicious expression going through his face.

"Where on earth are you going through then?"

"Well—" Sam started to say and immediately Helena shook her head. _"What?"_

"You are _insane,"_ Helena sentenced.

"Probably?"

Still, reaching their destination some half an hour later, seeing the exterior walls of St. Edmund Hall appear at the end of the street, Sam being insane or not mattered little. The sun was setting fast, the dark clouds that had hung over the city all through the day making night fall prematurely over the buildings. Unfortunately, and even if darkness seemed to offer her the perfect cover to get inside St. Edmund without anyone noticing, Sam had no choice but to wait. And wait she did. First by joining the rest of the Lamb's Club in St. Edmund's quad, then by walking aimlessly around Oxford, looking at stores and getting lost inside a bookstore that, weirdly enough, shared her name. It must be close to 11 P.M. when, watching the droplets of water that crashed faster and faster around her, Sam finally phoned Helena.

Once again it was truly unfortunate there wasn't a simpler way of doing this, like Helena unlocking the dorm's front door and letting her in. Things being as they were, however, Sam's plan consisted of, not so much striding triumphantly into the atrium, as dangling dangerously on rope made out of bed sheets outside Helena's bedroom window, Harvey and Charles' heads appearing and disappearing above her as the two of them tried to help her up the wall.

"Was there not—" Harvey panted once Sam's head appeared over the first floor parapet to Helena's room. "—some _trick_ to get you up here?"

A glance inside showing Harvey was presently standing with one foot against the wall, both hands firmly closed over the sheets while Helena sat, relaxed, at her bed, Sam reached to grab the hand Charles was offering her. The climb had knocked all air from her lungs, still, taking a deep breath of air, she all both panted her answer out:

"Abacadabra?"

Charles snorted so hard he lost all manner of strength, his effort to hoist Sam inside the room coming to such an abrupt stop she dived head first to the floor, ending up sprawled belly down under the window, her legs high in the air.

"Sorry," Charles apologized, laughter coming to an abrupt end, his expression one of visibly worry. Staring at Sam, seemingly too dumbstruck by her almost upside down position to do something, Harvey and Helena seemed to regain control over their cognitive functions at the same time.

"Are you hurt?" they echoed.

Getting her legs down to the floor, Sam shook her head.

"Still alive," she said, getting herself to a sitting position, legs crossed in front of her, back against the cold stone wall. Around of her Helena's room was just like she remembered from the last time she had been here. Unapologetic feminine, brimming with all those things one would expect of Helena — like her fashion posters, make-up and jewelry — but also with the things one didn't expect of her. Like the two large rows of books over her desk — something that both Charles and Harvey seemed to have noticed too.

"Thanks for the help by the way," Sam told them once she caught her breath again. "That was a bigger climb than I expected."

Harvey scoffed, crossing his arms.

"Thanks for helping you risk your neck, you mean," he retorted, and turned to Helena. "You were right back there, she _is_ insane."

Sitting on her bed, the way she was using her feet to push the wooden box she kept under it deeper into hiding not going unnoticed to Sam, Helena reached for her bedside table drawer. A small flask of nail polish being taken from there, she rose her fingers to the bedside lamp's light.

"So what is this about, Sam?" she asked while opening the flask, confident brushes turning the first of her long nails from pink to bright red. "How can we help?"

Getting up to shut the window, Sam felt a sudden tightness on her chest. And maybe it was that she had already revealed a little too much about herself with how she had treated the Lamb's Club during the situation with Angela, but that instant when she turned away from the window, eyes jumping from Charles, to Harvey, to Helena, seemed to be more than enough for all three of them to understand what was going on in her mind.

"She is at it again," Harvey announced, letting himself fall on the bright red chair to the center of Helena's room. "That's the _'you are all in my suspects list' _look right here!"

Sam crossed her arms.

"That's not—!"

"Out with it," Harvey said, talking over her. "What did we do?"

"Nothing!"

"We must have done _something_," Harvey retorted.

On his feet, midway between Sam and Harvey, Charles tilted his head.

"Is this about Angela?" he asked, wisely, and stepped back going to sit on the room's round rug. "You don't think we knew about her, do you?"

Sam raised her eyebrows.

"No, I—"

"Do you?" Harvey insisted, arms crossed, only to turn to Helena, who still sat at her bed, on the other end of the room, blowing softly to dry her red nail polish. "You talk to her."

One elegant eyebrow raising softly, Helena sighed, closed her nail polish bottle and turned to Sam.

"Sam, we are your friends," she reminded her. "We want to help. You can trust us."

Sam's notebook seemed to weight a ton inside the bag she had on her back. Still, she shook her head.

"It's not that," she reassured, and sucked her cheeks in, nose twisting.

Or maybe it is exactly that, Sam's own mind told her. She was no good at trusting. She would rather keep her suspicions to herself. But saying nothing, walking out of Helena's room and do what she was here to do, alone, when she had been the one to involve the Lamb's Club in the first place, was—Sam groaned, nostrils flaring.

Well, she had backed herself into a corner, hadn't she?

"Okay, okay!" Sam gave in and threw the trio a fearsome glare. "But you must not _whisper_ a word of this to David! _Ever._"

Harvey had just rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, sinking deeper into the chair.

"You already told us—"

"I need to get inside the cafeteria."

All three of them were looking at Sam now. Harvey leaning forward on the armchair, his eyebrows raised. Helena again softly blowing into her nails. Charles with his head tilted and a soft—

_"Why?"_

Sam sighed, an automatic gesture making her take her ponytail apart and tie it up again.

"I need to investigate," she said, crossing her arms.

"Investigate?" Harvey repeated, sounding bewildered. "What are you going to investigate? The police has left, the university cleaned the cafeteria—there is nothing to see."

Perhaps, but—Sam didn't have time to put her thoughts together. Sitting on the floor, Charles had just pulled his legs to his chest, he was talking and—

"I thought Angela was the one behind it," he whispered.

And it was the opening Sam needed. Just like that she turned the tables.

"It was Angela," she stated, hands on her hips. "But David wants to know how her brain worked so _maybe_ if I can work out how things went down on the cafeteria it will help him."

Helena had visibly frowned just know, even so the question that followed didn't came from her but Charles.

"Shouldn't he go to the police for that?" he asked, sensibly. Too sensibly.

"The police wasn't helpful," Sam was forced to shrug and in that, at the very least, she didn't have to lie. "Anyway, since no one is downstairs anymore—_You three are coming with me, aren't you?"_

They were. And so Sam found herself going down the stairs to the dorm's entrance with Helena, Charles and Harvey right behind her. Despite the late hour and most people already being in their rooms, the dorm's common areas weren't as empty as she had hoped. In fact, voices could be heard coming from the corridor leading to the pool, which meant that dropping to one knee in front of the door to the cafeteria, Sam didn't exactly have any time to waste.

"What are you doing?" Helena asked peeking over Sam's head to find her searching through her jeans' pockets.

"Picking the lock," Sam informed.

Turning away from the large entrance hall and the twin flights of stairs leading to the Undergraduate Wing to the left and the Graduate Wing to the right, Harvey pinched his lips.

"You know how to pick locks?" he echoed, an uncomfortable note filling his voice when Sam fished an hairpin from her pocket and started to bend it. _"Nice."_

"We are all getting expelled," Charles sentenced.

Sam looked up, at the three heads looming over her, a bit impatient.

"You are the ones who followed me down."

And she really wished they hadn't. Still, much like they had done when coming out of Helena's room and down the stairs to the dorm's entrance, Sam only had to hear the lock click and pull the handle down to see Harvey, Charles and Helena following her inside the cafeteria.

St. Edmund's cafeteria was, like Sam was just now finding out, this large rectangular-shaped room with ancient stone walls, Gothic-style windows and a high wooden ceiling to which a large row of lamps had been attached to. There was a rather elegant, if small, fireplace further down the room and, here and there, surviving furniture could be spotted, hidden away under white sheets. Regardless of the place having been, just like Harvey had said, cleaned up since the incident that had left the cafeteria in shambles, there were still many signs of what had gone down. Everywhere, be it near the ground or up near the windows, there were deep gauges on the walls. A decapitated statue stood to the back of the room, the cords around it clearly stating it was undergoing restoration. One or two of the windows were actually boarded up, the merciless cold inside the cafeteria no doubt coming from there.

Even without the debris to make it look like a war zone, however, the cafeteria still looked desolated. No table had been yet brought in to replace the ones that had been destroyed, there were no chairs, no paintings, and the trophies Sam had glimpse in this "Before and After" image the University's newspaper had put up were absent too. In fact, the only thing that was here that hadn't been here before was this very small pile of boxes put right next to the door. Recognizing them from when she had been waiting for Charles prior to interviewing Anna, and also from almost jumping out of her skin when someone had let one fall right outside Anna's door, Sam gave them a curious look before closing the door.

Now standing in front of the boxes, Harvey, Charles and Helena in front of her, Sam looked down at the cafeteria. This place was simply _huge_. This would take longer than she expected.

"So, what should we take a look at?" Harvey volunteered, his voice echoing up the walls, the notebook Sam had just taken out of her bag and the rough sketch of the cafeteria she was drawing gaining a curious look. "What should we focus on? Should we mark the holes on the walls or something?"

Sam stopped for a moment, her lie from just a few minutes ago — when she actually thought they wouldn't follow her down — forcing her to nod.

"We should write down those, yes," Sam said, a quick search through the notebook seeing her put one of the black and white pictures of the cafeteria next to her rough blueprint. "Also, any small strange looking holes that might be on the floor."

Already busy running their attentions over the gauges on the walls, the entirety of the Lamb's Club came right back to her.

"Small holes?" Harvey repeated, suspicious. "Why are we looking for small holes?"

Sam shrugged, turning her back on them to look at the cardboard boxes behind her.

"Nothing special," she spoke, arms crossed and frowning at the small pile. "I just want to be sure there wasn't anything weird going on."

Harvey gestured around.

"Weirder than _this?"_ he asked, only to be pinched by Helena. "Oh come on, what is she expecting to find the police didn't? Localized charges?"

Helena rolled her eyes. Still, not even Sam could deny that was a good question and unfortunately it might just have put the Lamb's Club on her trail. They were all looking straight at her now and turning her back on the small pile of cardboard boxes once again, Sam had little choice but to answer.

"I just want to make sure there are no signs someone other than Angela was responsible for this, okay?" Sam sighed and with that she looked at Helena, Harvey and Charles one at the time. "The police wouldn't think anything of some small holes they might find in the floor in the midst of all of the chaos, but they could have been used to secure a machine or something. There is no harm in us being thorough."

Everyone was frowning at her. Sam could imagine why. She probably sounded delusional.

"Look, probably there is nothing here," Sam tried to tell them and more importantly _herself_. "Angela made really weird things happen before. I just want a little piece of mind, that's all."

Harvey sighed, scrubbing his face, then pulling his hair back.

"You really are insane," he whispered and he looked around, up at the boarded-up windows and the scarred walls, then down to this large stain on the floor that looked a little too much like blood. In the end, he turned back at Sam.

"I'm in."

"Me too," Charles immediately joined in.

Both were looking at Helena now. Having still not given up on trying to dry her nails, Helena raised her eyebrows, looking from them to Sam.

"Do I really need to say it?" she said, sounding offended. "Of course, I'm with you!"

Considering how unsure Sam was with this arrangement, she wasn't expecting how grateful she actually felt right now. She wasn't expecting herself to be smiling.

"So," Sam went on to say and turned back to the place, right behind her, where the cardboard boxes were pilled. "Let's start to move these out of the way and start from there."

A determined step being taken towards the boxes, Sam leaned over the one at the top. Hands closing around it, prepared for an heavy load, she almost tossed the box up in the air once she raised it. Despite Sam almost immediately grabbing the box, stopping it from turning on her arms and falling to the floor, her saving didn't extend to it's contents. They came cascading from inside, tumbling to the floor. And trying to grab them, Sam was left wide-eyed. She had expected the box, all of the cardboard boxes really, to be filled with the medals and the trophies and other things that were missing from the cafeteria, but they weren't. What was inside, what had just fallen to the floor, this one thing she had managed to grab, was—

Fabric.

_Clothes._

Sam was left with her eyebrows raised.

"Is someone moving out?"

A strange silence met Sam's worried question. A strange, long silence. Putting the box on the floor, picking what seemed to be mostly woolen blouses to put them back inside the box, Sam went back to face the Lamb's Club. They stood in line, looking uncomfortable. None of them having even moved to help her. Even Helena, who wasn't ever fazed by anything, looked unsure about what to do. And that made a weight settle in Sam's stomach.

_"Who_ is leaving?" she insisted.

Standing in the middle of the group, arms crossed, Harvey shook his head.

"No one," he assured. "I mean—Sure someone _left_."

Helena rolled her eyes.

"That is _helpful,"_ she voiced, displeased, and turned to Sam. "Those are Angela's belongings."

Sam felt a sudden sadness sweep over her, attention going from the group in front of her to the cardboard box opened in the floor, to the green woolen blouse she had just folded and put on top and from there to the six or seven boxes still near the wall.

_Oh—_

"Is the university sending this to her family?" Sam asked in a quiet voice. "Back to Scotland?"

Again the silence. Sam looked up to find everyone staring at her.

"She doesn't know," Charles whispered and at that Harvey slipped his hands into his pockets, visibly uncomfortable.

"How out of the loop are you?" he asked.

Sam was staring at him, confusion leaving her with eyebrows raised and voice quiet.

"What do you mean?"

Helena took a step forward, away from the group, one elegant gesture pointing Sam's attention back to the box on the floor.

"Dear," she whispered. "Those aren't going to Scotland."


	4. Chapter 4 - Misgivings, part 2

**Misgivings**

(Part 2)

The employees of the Coliseum Theater in London were already gathered at their posts, their uniforms sprinkling the rich, white corridors of the building as they waited for the doors to the packed auditorium to open.

Tonight's show — like all of those from the past week that had shared the same performer — had sold out weeks ago, the speed with which the tickets had disappeared only matched by the enthusiasm of the crowds that had managed to acquire them and their wonder once the curtain closed and they rose from their seats, faces filled with wonder.

Contrary to what had happened the previous night, however, and the night prior to that, today was the first day the hands on the clock on the security office near the theater's entrance joined to announce midnight without any of those things happening, it was the first time the show had ever run late.

Taking a glance passed one of the building's opened front doors, out into the street in the center of London where the Coliseum Theater was located, Johnathan Archer, chief of the theater's staff, ignored the Georgian buildings on the other side of the road and the cars going by in favor of the clouds overhead and, perhaps selfishly wondering if he was to get home before the skies once again tried to drown England, stepped back into the foyer.

Footsteps made silent by the red carpet under his feet, he walked passed white columns, went up the stairs, and headed straight for one of the doors leading to the theater's Dress Circle, the second of the four levels of audience seats. Hearing applause coming from the auditorium on the other side, taking a moment to adjust the jacket of his uniform, Archer pulled the door slightly open and peeked inside.

Beyond the door, a sea of people sat on red satin chairs, the gentle incline to the different levels of stands allowing this clear view over the seats on the ground floor, the white boxes that climbed up the theater walls, the golden statues standing high over those same boxes, and to the stage itself. And it was there, under the imposing arch that framed the stage, under the red curtains hanging high overhead and the word 'COLISEVM' embroidered in them, that the same man who tipped his hat from the many posters embellishing the theater's corridors, had just raised one hand to the multicolored patchwork quill that was his audience. Immediately, the hundreds of people seated on the four levels of the auditorium fell quiet, hanging on his every word.

"The hour grows late," The Enigma spoke, the musical quality to his accent doing little to hide his Scottish nationality. "It all comes to its inevitable conclusion. We must depart, but first my gift to you."

A shiver of excitement went through the audience, a buzz of words filled the auditorium, be it on the boxes or in the audience seats, people dressed in their finest clothes turned to the husbands and wives, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers who sat at their sides, chattering, talking, smiling.

Enjoying their excitement, not knowing he had even managed to capture the attention of an old theater worker who, a mere minute ago, had just wished to go home, The Enigma tipped his top hat at the crowd and, walking across the stage with long, determined strides, approached this small support table hidden behind the red curtain and the glass of water that was there. Hidden from the audience, even if not from the many, __many __eyes backstage that trailed him or the large camera that was still filming him, The Enigma positioned himself towards the curtain and, careful as to ensure no one saw his expression or the tension the simple act of breathing brought to his gaze, looked towards the stage.

The atmosphere inside the auditorium had been obvious to him for the best part of the last half an hour, but it wasn't until now that it had become so oppressive he had no choice but to force himself to pay it mind. The air, The Enigma couldn't help but notice, smelled of electricity, it __tasted __like it, so much so that it left this metallic flavor on his mouth, that it felt like a storm was pressing overhead, roaring near the large dome on the auditorium's ceiling. The tension was palpable, dangerously, worryingly so, and, pondering on his promise to the audience just a minute ago, The Enigma had to wonder if it had been safe to speak of one last act. Standing here __now__, he wondered if he shouldn't play it safe and fetch the large illusionist box that was just a few steps to his side. Staring into the water on the glass he had just picked up, the slow rotating movement of his wrist making the liquid inside swerve, he did wonder, the sensible side of him calling for caution, the performer in him calling for action, both taking far too much of his time.

Growing impatient, The Enigma took his attention to the very limits of the stage. There, just inches away from the empty orchestra pit, four candles burned, their flames strangely long and inert, the white candle wax under them having yet to reach the plates despite the three hours of the show. Satisfied with what that told him, The Enigma pushed his concern aside, took a sip from the glass and made his way back.

The audience erupted in applause upon seeing him again, the fact that he returned empty-handed seeming to thrill them more than anything else. And as if to prove exactly that, this time, The Enigma didn't have to ask for anyone to quiet down, the applause faded on it is on, as did the voices, silence going to hang around him alongside the pressure of two thousand different eyes.

Breathing in, however, The Enigma thought about that less than about the green cliffs back home and the white flowers that bloomed this time of year, covering the green fields and jagged cliffs and looking just like snow. He remembered them as clearly as if he could see them, as clearly as if he was standing on one of the island's many pastures and, in truth, he might as well have been for the green grass around his legs, the chopped sea in the distance and the night sky overhead felt more real than the theater, they did make him feel like he was back on Muhr.

And yet, __he wasn't. __The metallic taste to his tongue was reminder enough of that and so, The Enigma leaned forward over the white flower field he saw in his mind, he closed his hands around as many of the flowers as he could, picked them up, and tossed them into the air.

There was a distant whisper of surprise, then clapping erupted around him. The green pastures of Muhr fading from his mind, The Enigma opened his eyes just as the flowers started to rain inside the theater, he opened his eyes not knowing that forty years into the future a very different kind of audience would be watching his performance and that that audience didn't care so much for the miraculous nature of his illusion, but for the fact that it was very much real, he stood center stage not knowing one day the cameras around him would show this very moment to those who knew his secret and that it would break his heart if he was ever to find out why.

But that future was not one Jessie Mulholland would know, the fire where he would perish would make sure of that, and so, with his entire life still ahead of him, The Enigma bowed, and smiled, and reached out for the flames that had been burning, not on the candles, but over them, to snuff them out with his mind. Then, he allowed himself a moment in the adoration of his public before the curtains closed and the cameras lost him from sight.

Standing on that present Jessie Mulholland was no longer part of, David Styles frowned at the video camera he held on his hands, the dark eyebrow that wasn't hidden by the mask covering half of his face drawing closer and closer to the pale material as he kept his attention firmly on the still rolling video. The grainy image had just panned away from the stage The Enigma had left, a second camera going to show the fully packed Coliseum Theater and the thousands that were there.

"He was famous, obviously," David noted just as one of the BBC's old logos, the one from the late fifties, appeared right in the center of the display. "And yet, I don't believe I ever heard of him."

The declaration was punctuated by the melodic chime of the bell hanging over the door. Attention called away from the smiling faces of the rising crowd on the camera's display — from the white flower an old lady had picked up and was sniffing — David found himself going over the illusionist wands, vials of stage blood and disappearing die on the shelves around him, the blast of cold air that was making its way inside the small store where he stood forcing his attention to follow the tall, middle-aged man who was the store's proprietor as he walked towards the door.

"Such is the fate of us performers," he was sighing, all the while welcoming the nervous-looking student who had just stepped inside. "We charm, we delight, we marvel, but it is luck and luck alone that dictates those who are remembered or those who are not."

Back towards the same wood counter where Sam had taken to sit, half-aware of her feet dangling several inches over this blade of wooden floor between the counter and the carpet, David stole a glance at the now black display of the camera, a deeply pensive expression taking over his face before he closed the camera's lateral display and offered it to Sam.

"You __knew__ The Enigma?" he asked.

The paper bag he carried, one embellished with the words 'The Black Wand', being offered to his lonely customer, the proprietor looked back inside his store, then at the wet cobblestones and lit streetlamps of Cornmarket Street just outside, at the sporadic groups going down the road. In a moment, the same hand that had bid farewell to the store's departing customer had dived for the doorknob and pulled the door close.

"Not in the meaningful manner you might be imagining," he remarked while reaching for the plaque that hanged from the top half of the door, the word that faced the interior of the store went from 'Closed' to 'Open'. "The Enigma was of the opinion that us not knowing him was for the best, otherwise, he used to say, we would just find out how utterly mundane and boring he was."

Fingers tuning an old-fashioned metal key on the lock, the proprietor let out a chuckle at the memory.

"He was quite the mentor for us young ones," he went on to share, only to visibly swallow his laughter once he turned back to his present audience. "Well, even _**_I_**_ was young once."

Four long fingers, their nails unsurprisingly painted black, had just closed over the sleeve of David's coat. Through the mirror, the same one that oddly enough was the store's window — the same one that had made him aware of Sam putting the camera inside the backpack she had over her legs and that now showed her leaning in his direction — David could see Sam's best attempt at a serious expression being utterly undermined by the mischievous smile taking over her face.

"He has proof and everything," she whispered, words playing near David's ear before a finger directed his attention not to the mannequin with a magician coat and the hat hanging from the strings attached to the ceiling, not to the large bookcase filled with magical props that was right beside it, but to some kind of golden puzzle box and the portrait that hang overhead.

If David had been in need of any evidence as to the fact that The Black Wand's proprietor hadn't come into the world in his late fifties, that would indeed have been proof enough. Things being as they were, however, David was not so much looking at the man's face as at the name on the golden frame. The letters read __Houdini.__ In the meanwhile, the proprietor's true name escaped David's mind as vehemently as if, in the twenty or so minutes he had been inside his store, it had fallen through the cracks of his memory. Something which __unfortunately__ could also be said for how quickly the details of how he had gotten here were fading. Not that it required that much effort to stitch things together. It had involved Samantha—__unsurprisingly—__and...

"That's the report on the cafeteria?"

Yes, __that. __The report. The thing had been over the kitchen aisle back at Dread Hill when he had come up from the lab some hours ago. There had also been something else. He believed Sam had been going over lunch, but it would make little difference if she had made good on her angry outburst about hordes of buffalo and put one on the kitchen, he doubted he would have seen it with as focused as he was on the report. In fact, for how little he recalled the kitchen, he actually had a very good memory of reaching for the pages and having Sam put her fingers right over them.

"You aren't going to like it," she had sentenced, sliding the report across the aisle and away from him the first chance she got. "Wouldn't you rather have the good news first?"

The good news had apparently come with a side dish of tea and scones for that had replaced the report he had been aiming for.

"You are feeding me and providing me with distraction," David remembered saying. "What is next? Tuck me into bed?"

"It would certainly be an __improvement__."

That admonishment had come from Stella and that was where the memory became fuzzy. There had been something about Sam trying to convince him to go to Oxford, there was this very clear memory of Stella right on route to the fridge and to find he had left last night's dinner untouched on the top shelf—Or had that been the day before? Regardless, David remembered fetching his jacket from the hanger right beside the front door and following Sam into Dread Hill's front courtyard. If that had been about escaping Stella, escape he had, only—

His mind heading back to The Black Wand, David looked around the wooden paneling around him, attention jumping from the high bookcase filled with magical props to his right to the back of the store and the place where half a dozen wands peeked from inside some sort of cylindrical container, where there was this box with daggers and a crystal ball. Truly, it was remarkable how little attention he had paid to Oxford prior to the past month. He had lived here all his life, studied here, he had gone down this very street hundred of times — he knew it for he recalled the ATM. __The ATM. —__ but this store, just like the bookstore that shared Samantha's name, just like rest of the street, converged into the same blur from which he couldn't retrieve the store's proprietor name and indeed it took the man stopping right in front of him and reaching out to shake his hand for David to recall the reason.

"I assume you are Doctor Styles?"

They hadn't been introduced yet.

"Yes," David said and he would have taken off the glove covering his right hand out of courtesy if a glimpse of the disfigured mass of burned skin peeking from between the glove and the jacket's black sleeve hadn't stopped him on his tracks. A second passed and he reached a gloved hand to Mephistopheles instead.

"David Styles."

The pale green eyes framed by the proprietor's heavy eyebrows smiled alongside his lips.

"I have heard of you," he mused in a low voice and while giving him a nod. "Oh, I have indeed."

It was like the buttons on the box Sam had just picked up from the counter were connected to her. Sat as she still was, legs hanging in front of her, studying the box, she had seemingly just triggered it to work when the proprietor spoke. As spectacular as the Jack-in-the-Box cackling leap was it had nothing, __nothing__ on Sam's own jump.

"This is Mephistopheles!" she exclaimed, all but slamming the Jack-in-the-Box against the counter in the midst of her panic to wave at Mephistopheles. "He is—!"

A walking display of flamboyance David would say if he wasn't staring perplexed at a flustered Sam. After all, standing right in the middle of his store, Mephistopheles had just taken a bow.

"I am indeed Mephistopheles," he announced with a whip at a non-existent cape. "The one who invited this young lady to perform at the Deadalus Club."

A smile that did far too much credit to his name making the wrinkles around his eyes more obvious, Mephistopheles rose from his bow and went to face David.

"I am also the one who left your invitation on the front window, Dr. Styles," he informed, polite, and while nodding his head at the mirror to their side. "I thought to send it with the courier that dropped Samantha's invitation at Dread Hill but I decided against it, not all sponsors wish to have their privacy invaded by the Club."

David blinked, eyes seizing to gaze at Sam to do the exact same thing only with Mephistopheles.

"Sponsors?"

Mephistopheles' shoulders seemed to have just slumped.

"So I am wrong," he muttered and he turned to Sam, a note of disappointment to his voice. "Dr. Styles is really __just__ your employer?"

"What do you mean really __just __my—?" Sam's eyebrows drew in, comprehension seeming to hit her like a lightning bolt. "Wait. You thought _**_I_**_ was behind those pranks and _**_he—_**_" A finger was pointed directly at David. "—was in on it?"

Mephistopheles hit them with a sudden grin.

"Of course!" he exclaimed. "Oh, it all made perfect sense! What other way to justify that rather extravagant Game? The track, the pool, it doesn't take __my__ experience to know those needed money and your spending on this store was so frugal, I could only conclude you didn't have it and couldn't possibly be behind it."

Sam's eyes narrowed, she crossed her arms, the fabric of her short black jacket scrunching when she did so.

"That was because I __wasn't,__" she retorted.

"Yes, I know that now," Mephistopheles sighed, fingers running over his goatee. "But at the time, I was convinced you were, and I could but ask how was it possible. And then, you mentioned Dr. Styles and it all became clear. Who was financing your Game? Dr. Styles. Who was getting you inside St. Edmund? Again, Doctor Styles."

Mephistopheles crossed his arms, eyes dropping to the large carpet with its intricate beige and red pattern.

"I became convinced that was the answer to that rather fascinating puzzle."

It felt to David like his brain had just reconnected. His eyes narrowed, looking away from Sam, the line to his lips curled down.

"__Fascinating?"__ he repeated and if anything Mephistopheles was not deaf to his tone. Looking back up, his expression became serious.

"****If**** it had been a Game it was original and as far as __you__ were informed, _**_harmless_**_," he said, allowing for the weight of that last word to settle in before nodding at his own speech and continuing. "I was proven wrong in my assumptions, of course, but I won't apologize for believing Miss Everett has the brains for a Game that intricate. I still think she does."

Fingers drumming on the backpack she had on her lap, Sam had just pinched her lips.

"Jeez," she grumbled. "Thanks."

Mephistopheles let out a small chuckle and turned back to David.

"Still, even if you are not a sponsor," he said with a building smile. "The question remains, what did you think of the show?"

"It was—"

David's eyes glanced to his left, to where Sam sat. It would have been easier to find the right words without her looking at him with that much anxiety.

"Quite good."

Mephistopheles nodded, pleased.

"Yes, that seems to be the overwhelming opinion," he stated, fingers again moving through his short beard. "But I have talked enough already. Samantha was rather insistent that I assist you_—_"

Those words having just caused Sam to open her bag, to put this tiny red fairy on top of the counter, Sam nevertheless looked up, the notebook she was clearly aiming for peaking from inside her backpack as she did so.

"She was also rather __insistent__ in asking if you wouldn't get in trouble," she pointed out only for Mephistopheles to offer her this deeply innocent gaze.

"More trouble than I did for your behavior back at the Club, Samantha?"

Sam's cheeks had just gone red. So, David noticed, had the tip of her ears.

"I said I'm sorry," she said with a wince. "Twenty times already. And I __am__ sorry!"

Mephistopheles eyebrows had, if possible, became even more arched.

"For accusing me of running a Game?" he probed, the Arabic-inspired chandelier on the ceiling drowning his face in both light and shadows. "Or for your creative use of the Club's props?"

Sam had just taken a sharp inhale and crossed her arms.

"Not for the second one," she stated, eyes like blue fire.

"Not for the second one," Mephistopheles repeated and, glancing at David, let out an overly dramatic sigh. "Given your reasons that might be excused."

Still standing with his back to the counter, David frowned, attention moving from Mephistopheles to Sam and then the other way around. Was it just him or_—_

"Am I missing something?" he queried only to see Mephistopheles eyes bulge.

"You don't know?" he practically gaped and turned to Sam, grinning. _"___My, my…"__

And there was definitely something David was missing here, that was the explanation for this panicked sidelong glance Sam had just given him_—_and how much she seemed like she wanted to flee when he looked back at her.

"Question still stands!" she threw at Mephistopheles.

Chuckling rose up the Black Wand's wood-paneled walls, it echoed between the wands, crystal balls and the assortment of magnets, changing dies and flash powder. Still, it was with what looked to be a pacifying gesture that Mephistopheles made his way across the store.

"A secret is hardly a secret when the entire room knows of it," he said, moving passed David and Sam. "Also, some matters are far too grievous to abide by the Club's secrecy oath."

Mephistopheles stopped behind the wooden counter of his store, attention running over the pair of newspapers that he had left there and this small news article that featured Angela's picture. If the letters surrounded that article were so small they couldn't hope to be understood from where David stood, the same couldn't be said for the ones in the newspaper under that one, even half-covered the aisle of Christ Church Cathedral, blocked out by police tape, could clearly be seen. That and the giant words on top of the page, the ones that screamed the headline in bold, over-sized letters.

****"Blood at Christ Church: Student Jumps to her Dead."****

David's lips curled with disgust. To the other side of the counter, Mephistopheles was shaking his head.

"Dastardly business," he whispered, eyes lingering on Angela's small picture. "Since you are a member of the faculty, Dr. Styles, may I inquire how my colleague is fairing with_—_?"

There was this wave at the articles. To David's side, Sam's eyebrows shoot up, right hand closing over David's shoulder she jumped to the floor.

"Fairing?" she repeated once she turned back to Mephistopheles, eyes narrowed. "You_—_"

Sam stopped, David having just raising his index finger her way leading her press her lips as he took the lead.

"I regret to inform you I don't have good news," David spoke, his voice gentle. "Jessie Mullholand passed away several years ago."

Mephistopheles blinked.

"He—?"

It took him a moment, but a head shake leading him back to the newspapers, Mephistopheles went to gaze at Angela. At David's side, however, Sam's eyes were still narrowed in suspicion, her fingers tapping on her jacket.

"You didn't know?" she pushed forth.

"No," Mephistopheles said, shaken. It took him a moment, a long one, to gain back some of his flare and resume talking. "The Enigma retired some—Let me think it was 1982… That makes it twenty-so years ago?"

"Twenty three," Sam exacted, while opening the notebook over the counter. A curious glance from Mephistopheles, however, and she sighed. "I better know my own age."

David shook his head.

"You were going to say The Enigma retired," he reminded Mephistopheles.

Mephistopheles nodded, smoothing the newspapers in front of him.

"Yes," he said in a slow, pensive tone. "It was a rather abrupt departure. The Enigma gave one last Grand Tour, and just like that—" Mephistopheles snapped his fingers. "Gone."

David frowned, the drumming of Sam's pen against the notebook raising from his side.

"That wasn't considered strange?" she asked, pulling her bangs away from her face.

Mephistophles chuckled, the Zoltan that was on the shelves behind him seeming to peek from over his shoulder.

"Strange?" he repeated and his face opened again, wonder taking over his voice. "Oh, it was a __mystery!__ The Enigma always knew how to make an exit, every year we questioned if he would come back, his disappearance kept us talking for years."

Arms crossed, David traded a quick glance with Sam.

"And no one knew why he left?" she spoke for him.

"We had our theories," Mephistopheles shared with a nod. "But I doubt anyone knew for a fact—and even if someone did know why would they reveal it? Why should the Club strive to destroy a good mystery?"

There was this rustle as Sam turned a page in her notebook. Looking down, Mephistopheles found her looking straight at him.

"Because __something__ could have happened to him," she put forth, tone penetrating. Her answer? A shrug.

"Or he might have preferred to fade away quietly," Mephistopheles pointed out. "Or got tired of fame, or just wished people would leave him be. It would be rather ungraceful of the Club to pursue answers if that was the case."

Sam pressed her lips, unsatisfied. Whatever she wished to say, however, remained sealed inside her mind as David took the lead.

"I will infer from what you said just now," he said, speaking to Mephistopheles. "That you have no knowledge __at all__ of what happened to the Enigma."

Mephistopheles' eyes had just bored into David's.

"I assume he wasn't taken by old age," he pointed out, darkly. "But no. I truly thought him well and alive. Rather naively, I fear, he would be seventy if not more by now."

Silence took over the small store once more. Looking at the newspaper over the counter, Mephistopheles' expression saddened.

"It must have been a horrible shock for that child," he reflected. "They seemed very close."

The chimes that hanged from the ceiling trembled, the soft song filling the air leading David to glance back, to where they hanged near the door. In the meanwhile, and right at his side, Sam had ripped her attention from the notebook to look straight at Mephistopheles.

"You knew Angela?" she pressed.

"I knew __of__ her," Mephistopheles remarked, him too looking at the singing chimes, then at the closed door to the Black Wand. "The Club is rather private, I can only imagine the __scandal__ if any of us tried to sneak our children inside. Still, it doesn't say anything about us attending one another performances."

Sam had just rolled her eyes. Elbow over the counter, she leaned her head against one hand.

"That is a long way to say no," she muttered and stopped, a quick glance being directed at the way David was still looking at the now quiet chimes before she went back to Mephistopheles. "You saw Angela in one of The Enigma's performances?"

It took Mephistopheles a full five seconds, perhaps more, to be able to stop frowning at the chimes and go back to face Sam.

"Yes, on that last tour I mentioned," he informed and crossed his arms. "He called her… Let me think. It was rather endearing."

Mephistopheles scratched his chin, thoughtful.

"Yes, I remember," he finally said and the chimes rocked near the door. "He called her fairy." They rocked so hard it was almost impossible to hear him, that all three of them were looking back now, towards the door and the golden chimes hanging from the ceiling. "My fairy."

It was like something had just exploded out in the street, the door was tossed open, it crashed onto the wall with such strength, Sam and Mephistopheles jumped. For David, however, had the door remained close or flown across the store and crashed into the display to the back, it would have made no difference. He never saw Mephistopheles step from behind the counter, muttering in confusion, he never saw Sam stride behind him and straight for the chimes, anger to her expression. The Black Wand had just fallen around him, he was back at Christ Church Cathedral with Angela, desperately trying to make her listen, to make her step away from the balustrade. He was there with her again, watching as a moment of lucidity made her stare into the abyss under her feet, as it made her sound exactly like a child.

"__I used to love fairies," __she whispered.

David stepped away from the counter that same instant, he fled least what had happened just seconds after replayed in his mind, least it caught up to him just like the flames used to.

"You remember anything in particular?" David probed, his tone as forceful as the steps that took him to the bookcase that was right to the side of the door. As many magical props as were there, he wasn't seeing any, he focused solely on the place where Mephistopheles stood, one foot keeping the door to the Black Wand open, stopping it from being hammered against the wall again. "About Angela or her father? Were they behaving normally? Did something happen that was out of the ordinary?"

A concerned look being given to this crack that had appeared on one of the door's squared glasses, Mephistopheles looked back.

"You must understand that the entirety of the Enigma's shows were out of the ordinary," he spoke. "But I understand what you mean and no."

David frowned. Still holding the door, Mephistopheles seemed to be trying to understand how it had burst open.

"No?" David pressed on.

Closing his hand over the doorknob to turn it from one side to the other, going so far as stepping outside to look up and down the darkened street, Mephistopheles made his way back just as a group of students started going down the road.

"That child looked happy, normal," he went on to inform just as the group outside burst into a drunken song. "In my mind, she is just this small girl all dressed in pink trying to help her father pack his things. I also remember several instances of my colleague pretending to get her mixed for a prop and preparing to pack her."

Mephistopheles closed the door on the students and their singing, a sudden gleam in his eyes.

"I remember, yes, I remember her being put inside this large illusionist box and my colleague acting confused as to why the door wouldn't close. It made her laugh herself silly that."

Sam's interest had just been peeked, as stuck as her nose had been on the chimes the last time David had glanced her way, as much as she had looked like a bloodhound while trying to look for God knows what on the floor behind the counter, she stepped away from all of that now.

"The Enigma was an illusionist too?" she asked, head appearing over the counter.

His attention having moved to the merchandise the sudden blast of wind had pushed out of the shelves, Mephistopheles grinned.

"Oh yes, if only in the intervals of his more extravagant displays," he informed while picking some cards from the carpet. "But that was not the reason why anyone went to his shows and he knew it. We wanted the showers of flowers, the dancing fires, we wanted that moment when the air went stiff with electricity, we wanted __real__ magic. Even those who didn't know that was what they were being treated to."

Mephistopheles sighed and got back up, cards on his hands, a note of nostalgia taking over his voice.

"Those were absolutely wonderful performances," he whispered, a quick gesture making the cards he held disappear as he arched his eyebrows at Sam's thoughtful expression. "Yes, Samantha?"

Back to leaning against the counter, Sam frowned before she continued.

"How did you find out about him?" she asked Mephistopheles, her index finger going to rest on the red fairy she had put over the counter to push it back and forth. "I can't imagine how one brings something like __that__ up."

Sam tilted her head to one side, raising her right hand to greet an imaginary public.

"Hi, I'm The Enigma and I have magical powers?"

Mephistopheles' face contorted with mirth.

"That would be quite the introduction," he chuckled. "But no. He never spoke of it and I seldom, if ever, found anyone who shared my opinion on what The Enigma was actually doing."

Sam's eyebrows arched, the mirror behind her showing the way the hair on her ponytail moved to the side when she tilted her head.

"But you investigated, right?" she pressed on.

"If you can call being caught inspecting the Deadulus Club fuse box investigating, yes."

David crossed his arms, curiosity making him stride back to where Sam and Mephistopheles stood, the man now leaning to pick what seemed to be a pair of fake thumbs from the floor, Sam with one of her elbows over the counter and biting the back of the pen.

"The fuse box?" David asked, stopping beside her. "Why the fuse box?"

Mephistopheles took a glance around the store, seemingly to make sure there wasn't anything else on the floor, before answering.

"The Enigma liked to play with the Club's electrical illumination," he informed. "It was quite common when he was in the Club for the entirety of the building's lights to start behaving oddly."

David blinked, a glance at his side, at Sam, was all took, however, to tell she was not even remotely impressed.

"That is not hard to do," she pointed out, lips, covered in black lipstick still over the back of the pen. "There are timers, circuit breakers."

Mephistopheles nodded.

"Indeed," he agreed, crouching to put the pair of fake thumbs back in the cabinet underneath the counter. "What was hard was doing it the way it happened, on command, regardless of the circumstances." A sigh broke through the words. "Not that it didn't take me a lot of convincing to accept there was no way he could have every single building he stepped on rigged and that every venue couldn't have allowed him to play with their illumination. Less so when lamps tended to explode."

Sam's eyes had just gone wide, she turned back to her notebook, scribbling furiously as Mephistopheles kept talking.

"Even so, it was quite the endeavor to get the courage to bring that up," Mephistopheles admitted, a rare modesty to his voice. "When it came to it, I fear I could only bring myself to talk to him on the street outside the Club."

David's fingers were drumming against his forearm, the fabric of his black jacket rendering the sound mute.

"What did he say?" he asked.

"An illusionist never reveals his secrets," Mephistopheles shared, a gleam of mischief taking over his eyes the next second. "And then the street lights went out."

Sam snorted, the pen she was holding scrapping at the paper as it put down the words 'exploding lights' and 'weight room' and underlined them three times. A glance at that and David went back to Mephistopheles.

"You seem to have held him in high regard," he commented.

"I still do," Mephistopheles said. "It is strange how inconceivable it is to me that The Enigma is no longer with us, that he could be cut out by something as trivial as death."

Mephistopheles shook his head, just like that he seemed to be pulled right back to the newspaper and Angela.

"Even so," he now said, voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. "It might be a kindness that he isn't here to see this."

Something to the gleam of Mephistopheles' eyes seemed to go out, his gaze remaining with Angela as she looked back at him from the black and white photo.

"People are indeed full of surprises," Mephistopheles stated, his eyes seeming to struggle to abandon the newspaper before he went back to Sam and his voice got back its usual flare. "Not all of them __pleasant__."

Sam let her head fall into one hand.

"Do you __really__ want me to apologize again?"

Considering what happened next the answer was 'yes' and there was little David could do but stand and frown as some trouble with props and Sam's use of them took over the conversation once again. It might have a good ten minutes before they were stirred back on track, before the topic went back to The Enigma. In the end, however, and stepping out into Cornmarket Street with Sam, David had little choice but to admit that the last half an hour after that interruption had been nothing more than the three of them going in circles. In fact, it might have taken David quite a while to acknowledge that only one question had been left unanswered.

"Did that help?" Sam's voice queried.

And no, that wasn't remotely the question he was concerned with, and with it, David turned back to where Sam presently stood, pulling the Bentley's trunk open.

"What __exactly__ were you apologizing for?"

All it took was a glance at him for Sam to shrug and lean forward, head disappearing inside the trunk. If that was by any means an attempt to flee the question it rapidly came undone, David was still very much waiting when Sam reached up for the trunk's door and stepped from behind the car, umbrella in hand.

"So?" David insisted.

Sam offered him a grimace.

"Is it important?" she queried, going to massage the back of her neck. "The Deadalus Club only took an interest in me because they thought I was the one doing those things at campus, and after what I did in there I don't think they will ever want anything to do with me."

That was as good as a non-answer, God knows why David said what he said next instead of acknowledging just that.

"That wasn't what I took from that conversation."

"You—"

Eyes ablaze with hope, Sam never got to finish. David had turned his back her, on the Bentley, he was walking towards this sadly neglected garden that stood among the night and, had he cared to look, he might have noticed he was standing somewhere he knew, that there was something familiar to the toolbox and moldy portraits and red bike he had just left behind, things being as they were, however—

"You know we are in the _**_garage!" _**_Sam exclaimed.

If David was a step from the puddle of water covering Dread Hill's driveway, it certainly looked like less. Water was streaming down the gravel outside in this slow-moving river that was only disturbed by the water dripping from the garage's roof and the rapid dive into a drain near the old folly. Had Sam spoken a second later and he would have been roused not by her voice but by having his feet sink into the water. Still, that wasn't what would have surprised David more. That was saved for—

"You didn't notice us getting back home?" Sam was asking, the sound of her heels hammering on the gray slabs as she jogged passed the Bentley and her bike to stand right at David's side at the garage's entrance. "You kind of went away on the way here, but I didn't think—"

David shook his head, the sharp gaze he had been giving the tall trees and to the shrubs with their dried branches that were being illuminated by the garage's light, flying right to his side and Sam.

"Did I drive here?"

Sam switched the umbrella to her left hand, reaching inside her short jacket's pocket, a moment later the Bentley's keys were swinging from her finger.

"I took the key," she said, stealing a glance at him, or more exactly at the gray trousers and white shirt that could be glimpsed under his jacket. "Were you working the entire night? I'm kind of sure you were wearing that yesterday."

Sam wasn't wrong about that and yet, having just pulled the garage's door close, the tip of his fingers grazing her hand when he took the umbrella, David had taken a quick look to the mud pattern on Sam's jeans rather than answering.

"So were you," he pointed out, the umbrella snapping open over their heads when he pressed the button. "You weren't here last night?"

Walking at his side, bots sinking into the wet gravel, Sam looked from the driveway leading directly to Dread Hill—and the large puddle the lit lamp over the garage door showed to be in their way—to the neglected flowerbed right across the driveway.

"I stayed at Oxford," she informed, her fingers closing over David's arm as she took to guide him towards the flowerbed. "It started raining like crazy, I bunked up with Helena."

Now, stretching his arm so that the umbrella would remain over Sam as she went up the small step that lead to the shrubs and trees and the many soaked leaves lying on the ground, David stared at her, eyes wide.

"At St. Edmund's?" he queried, the overgrown shrubs pulling at the fabric of his trousers when the two of them started to walk along the flowerbed. At his side, night pressing around her, Sam sighed.

"Nobody saw me," she said, the water lazily going down the black canvas overhead and dripping into her shoulder making her put her arm around David's as she looked at him. "Oh, come on! You are the one going around telling me not to drive through storms!"

"Someone bloody well has to," David grumbled, both of them stepping back into the driveway. On the manor now in front of them, only the warm light coming from the parlor window was lit, the back of a skeleton and the computer to its side cut out against the windows squared glass.

"You can write down the information from this last interview?" David asked looking back to Sam.

Sam tilted her head, arm still linked with David's arm, her thumb distractedly caressing his arm.

"You managed to make that thing work again?" she asked, looking towards the illuminated parlor and the computer wherein. "I thought it was a goner."

"I have very little doubt that it will be," David whispered, the locked front door forcing him to take the key from his jacket as Sam stepped away from him, her hands diving for her jeans' pockets.

"As Mrs. Dalton left already?"

She had. Beyond the door, the yellowish light from the parlor offered some light to the atrium, but the rest of the house, the kitchen, the stairway, the floor above, everything was empty and silent. In fact, and going up the stairway, going by Laura's portrait, the plant on the landing and the large window, so where they and it wasn't until David had his hand closed over the doorknob to his room, until he heard the door to Sam's door being opened and he looked back, over his shoulder—the door to an unoccupied room and the wood bench, all he could see of the part of the corridor Sam stood at—that that same silence was brought to an end.

"Sam," David called out. He couldn't see her. For all he knew she might have already entered her room, she might not even be here anymore, but—

"That store owner," David spoke, recalling a question she asked on the garage, a question he hadn't answered. "He helped."

There was this clicking of heels to the other side of the corridor, just like if Sam had turned away from the door.

"And __still__ you don't seem to be in a very good mood," she spoke.

David scoffed.

"Have you ever meet me in a very good mood?"

"No," Sam admitted and her voice softened just like it would for a smile. "But I haven't lost all hope yet."

The corridor fell into silence again, outside soft rain hit the large stairway window. They should have left. They were still here. And standing near his door, David had no idea why he kept looking back, what he was expecting to say or hear.

"Are you still coming down?" Sam finally spoke and if it wasn't so quiet David might not have heard her, he might have not gotten a chance to answer.

"I still have to go over those bad news of yours."

Sam must have just cringed, her tone certainly made it look like she had.

"I had forgotten about those," she said and the door closed behind her, the bolt clicked, the quiet hammering of Sam's heels echoed beyond the closed door only to stop once she reached the carpet to the side of the bed. There was this quiet stomping now, right before Sam's voice changed to this high pitched register—and why, __why__ David was picturing her crouching to pick up that white, over-sized rodent of hers was so beyond him that he shook his head, turned the knob and hit the switch to the side of the door.

It was already nine when, having taken a bath, David made his way down to the parlor. Sat at the desk, half-hidden by a skeleton and giving this soft knocks to the side of the computer as if trying to coach it into working, Sam took a quick glance at him.

"Mrs. Dalton left a plate with your name on the fridge," she announced. "And I mean it __literally__. There is a place holder right in front. It reads 'David'."

It would. And that it did earned the same answer David felt he had spent the last three years perfecting.

"I'm not hungry."

Stepping closer to the desk, a glance around it showing David little more than the box where he kept his old photos with Laura and a wallet, David tilted his head at Sam.

"Your report?"

Sam raised one arm over the computer's display, right at the living room area of the parlor.

"Table."

By her lack of insistence on him fetching dinner, David should have known Sam had something up her sleeve. Or in this case, as he discovered as he made his way passed the nearest armchair, right on top of her report. A plate, a mug, and—__and a scone.__ David picked it up, turning back to the picture of innocence that was Samantha Everett.

"What?" she asked, head peeking from behind the old-fashioned computer display.

"I swear you are turning into Stella," David remarked.

There was this lopsided smile on Sam's face now.

"Does that come with the cooking?" she queried, the playfulness to her tone almost causing David to smile before he went to sit not on the armchair he usually occupied, the one that would leave him with his back to the door and Sam, but on the sofa, the pages to the report being put over his legs.

David was right in the middle of an interview concerning someone named Anna Botting when he took a moment to press his eyes. He remained like that as the grandfather clock in the dining room to the other side of the house stroke eleven. He was still in that position when Sam stretched and yawned and, stepping away from the computer, moved passed the armchair closer to the parlor door.

"That thing just flashed a blue screen at me," she informed, raising the floppy disk she had on her hand. "I can't believe you still use these by the way."

David didn't move even as Sam put the floppy drive on the center table and started to leave. He didn't move, not until Sam closed her hand over the doorknob, pulled the door open and seeing her step towards the atrium, disappearing beyond the door, roused him.

"Nothing," David said towards the dark parlor, the report being raised when Sam took a single step back and reappeared, walking backwards, from the other side of the door. "They saw nothing, they felt __nothing__."

Sam pressed her lips, her footsteps quiet as, leaving the door open behind her, she made her way back.

"I said you weren't going to like it," she said, softly, left hand closing over the top of the green armchair she had walked up to. "You look about as frustrated as I thought you would be—"

The report had just been tossed onto the center table, hitting the unused ashtray on its way down.

"Okay, more," Sam corrected herself and stepped into the living area. "It really doesn't look good, does it?"

David had taken to press the side of his head.

"It looks irrelevant that's what it looks like," he snapped as Sam dropped the boots she had been carrying in one hand near the empty fireplace. "I had thought that with as many witnesses as the cafeteria had, we would have a clearer picture of what happened, even a timeline, but—"

Sam dropped her eyes, her quiet "Sorry" making David stop mid-rant.

"Sorry?" he repeated, turning to find Sam with her back towards the fireplace and clutching her hands. "What for?"

Teeth biting into her lower lip, she pointed at the report.

"That isn't exactly of help," she said.

"Yes, and I fail to see why you should apologize for it," David remarked, confused, and only for Sam's silence to make him shake his head.

"If I approach this with the data alone" he continued and, for whatever reason, he tried—__he tried__ to sound calm. "It might yet make sense. The cafeteria is an abnormality, it makes little sense with the observations in all other events, it might be easier to explain its absence than the inclusion."

Sam frowned, in a moment she had stepped away from the fireplace and the bookcase to its side and, going around the small center table, walked the entire length of the sofa to sit on the carpet in front of where David sat.

"You mean it should have happened at the track?" she asked him, legs pulled to her chest, eyes sharp.

"Yes," David said and immediately looked down at her. "Did something happen there?"

Sam lay her head over her knees.

"I thought it might, you know? I even left Eddie on lookout."

__Eddie?__

David pressed his lips before the question had a chance to reach his voice. It was unnecessary to lose time with it, he remembered that name, it had glared at him from Sam's first report. Eddie. He was the witness from the track, the one who had himself convinced he was dealing with aliens, and that wasn't at all important, much less considering what Sam said next.

"Anyway, he didn't see anything."

David immediately frowned.

"Odd," he pondered while crossing his arms, eyes gazing blindly at the painting of flowers over the fireplace. "There should have been __something__."

That phrase, unsurprisingly, didn't get passed Sam.

"There __should__ have been?" she repeated. "You have some theory already?"

"Only the obvious one," David shared, his attention slipping back to where Sam sat, her legs now crossed under her. "That Angela's ability to project herself was connected with her imagination. The timing between the experiments and the events on campus, even the behavior of the shadow the witnesses reported seeing, all seem to indicate she was responding to the stimuli given during the sessions."

A thoughtful expression took over Sam's face. Now straightening, she turned her torso to look towards the table behind her.

"So, running, swimming—" she said, reaching for the report David had tossed there. Flicking through pages, she frowned at the words she herself had typed.

"And the lines?" she went to ask, a frown being directed at David when she looked back to him. "The water changing color? The weights making that kind of pyramid I witnessed? What do you think those were?"

"Possible residue," David theorized. "Or perhaps she imagined it as well, I have no explanation for it yet."

There had been something to Sam's expression just now, something David knew he better pay attention to—and yet he was far too focused on his work to pay it much mind.

"Still, the similarity between what was witnessed of Angela's powers and what Mephistopheles was able to describe of the Enigma's, the fact that in both cases electricity was involved, seems to imply we are dealing with genetic, not a 'gift' like many paranormal researchers and some parapsychologists defend," David said. "Since I proved science can be used to measure the phenomenon Angela could create, since it can find the brain structures responsible for it, observe them while they work, what this means for biology is revolutionary."

The report Sam had on her hands was put back over the center table, right between the ashtray and the silver box where the matches for the fireplace where stored.

"There is a but, isn't it?" she pointed out, back to hugging her legs.

There was. And, irritation again getting the best of him, David got up.

"The truth is that all that is irrelevant without facts to back it up," he snapped, making his way around the sofa and towards the closed door to his former office. "My experiment is hardly valid when I couldn't even keep my test subjects the same each session. My observations, my data can be easily dismissed as an unrepeatable glitch. And then, of course, there is my own bias. My theories are sufficiently known that something like this would easily make my usual critics think I'm delusional. The rest of my colleagues would be happy to follow."

There was this rustle coming from the living area of the room, now making his way passed the anatomical model and the small table behind the sofa were the pictures of some of his old patients were, David could see Sam kneel on the sofa, arms leaning over its back.

"Isn't that a little harsh?" she asked him.

David scoffed.

"__Harsh?"__ he said, looking back at her. "Would you believe?"

Sam's fingers ran over the green fabric of the sofa before she looked straight down, seemingly going to gaze at the back of the picture frames. In the end, those large blue eyes of hers came back to him while Sam shook her head at herself.

"Honestly?" she spoke, her tone apologetic. "I wouldn't. I'm having trouble believing it now and I actually saw it."

David scowled, this time aiming straight at the desk Sam had been working on and the computer resting there.

"And you are not the scientific community, whose skepticism, I might add, strives dangerously close to the close-minded."

"So, what are you going to do?"

David stopped his pacing beside the desk, the mist that pressed against the windows behind it leaving him facing this grayish curtain that seemed to have been pulled over the driveway. He couldn't see anything. Absolutely anything. Not even the streetlamps lining the road just passed the estate's walls.

"I don't know," David admitted after a while, the anger to his voice sizzling out as quickly as it had taken over it. "I had hoped any dead-end I might run into would be in some far off future, but, given this, it seems to be just around the corner."

David shook his head, turning his back on the window to face the place where Sam still was, kneeling over the sofa, arms over its back and looking straight at him.

"Can't Angela's files help you?" she was offering. "I remember there was a phone number there. I can call it if you don't have—"

Sam's eyebrows had just drew in.

"You already called, didn't you?" she pointed out.

The steady beating of David's heart seemed to him to have just become dull. Gazing for a moment longer into the mist outside, he made his way back across the living room and sat on the sofa, right to the side of where Sam was still kneeling, his head going to rest against the sofa's back.

"I called," David told her, the already dark parlor going completely black when he closed his eyes. "The connection was cut off the instant I mentioned I was with Oxford University. I have tried to call again, but the phone seems to have been left off the hook ever since."

A soft _"___Oh"__ had just came from his side, the pillow where David sat shifted. Opening his eyes, turning his head to where Sam was, he found her sitting right at his side, the right side of her body resting against the back of the sofa.

"That isn't the end of the world, right?" she said, voice quiet despite the obvious encouraging tone. "You still have the address."

David had just sunk deeper into the sofa.

"Yes, and I haven't had much luck with getting an answer to my letters either," he told Sam. "I actually went so far as writing to a neighbor so I could at least know they were being delivered—"

Sam had just leaned forward. She was close. She was so close David actually could see some brushes of gray to her otherwise blue eyes, that he might have wondered why he didn't mind how close she was if his mind had written any of this as odd.

"You sent the letter to the wrong address on purpose?" Sam put forth. "What happened?"

The back of David's head went to rest against the sofa again, his attention slipping away from Sam's eyes and to the fangs of the Indonesian guardian that was over the bookshelves.

__What happened?__ At this point, it was easier to just go ahead and show Sam and so David got up, he stepped outside the parlor, he made his way across the atrium and opened the door to the dining room.

It took a moment for the line of chandeliers in front of the Viking heads near the ceiling to go on, it took an even longer moment for David to stop looking up and frowning at the third lamp from the window and convince himself it wouldn't turn on. Overall, however, it made little difference if that particular chandelier worked or not, David's target took him straight under it and passed the fireplace, it made him leave Laura's watercolors behind and walk along the table as he strode for the cabinet near the large windows.

Attention sliding over the china and silver inside, not actually seeing any of the cabinet's content, David dropped to one knee and opened the cabinet's lower door. Not a moment later, a pile of paper had came tumbling from inside, water bills, electricity bills, taxes all going to fill the floor around his feet.

"That sure is messy," Sam commented, dropping to help collect the papers. "Do you want me to take these upstairs and go over them? I don't think it would take long."

"There is hardly the need."

Sam had just rolled her eyes, her head appearing over the open door to the cabinet.

"There is tons of need," she remarked, while squaring the many papers in her hands against her leg. A glance inside the cabinet and she had pointed out the colorful folders to the left of the basket. "Those look neat. Two or three more and—"

Sam fell quiet, attention going over the dates on the folders. The first one, right against the cabinet wall, read 1998, the last 2002 and judging by Sam's falling expression, by the worried sidelong glance she had just given him, that spoke for itself. Laura was the one behind that. She had been the one with the patience to go over these things, to organize them, to store them neatly into those colorful folders — of course, now that David thought of it, it was possible she simply did it for fear of what he had just done, which was to simply toss the bills back into the overflowing box and hope for the best.

Right now, just as back then, however, if the entire pile decided to fall apart the next time he opened the cabinet — or even right now — was the last thing on David was concerned with. The letters he was looking for were stuck between the folder that read '2002' and the paper weight keeping the group from falling, and getting them out of there, David rose to his feet, offering the letters to Sam.

"Unknown recipient," she immediately read and she flipped the first letter, studying the unbroken seal before frowning at the post office stamp on the second one.

"Unknown?" she repeated with furrowed eyebrows.

David walked passed her, his shoulder going to rest against the closest window, the cold from the glass filtering through the white shirt he had on as he looked outside, through the squared glass, and towards the same dense fog he had been facing on the parlor.

"Maybe I tried to reach out too early," David pondered, locks of black hair getting stuck on the damp glass when he rested the side of his head against the window. "It had barely been two weeks when I sent that."

Silence descended over the dining room, it took its place over the large table to David's back and the chairs around it, over the fireplace and the watercolors on the wall, over the angel statue standing high over the room.

"It was definitely too early," David whispered.

A blur of black and purple appeared on the window, it filled one of the squares of glass, then two then three until Sam finally stopped in front of David, still going over the stamps on the envelopes.

Was David focused in anything else other than the timing of his letters, was his mind not threatening to slip back three years and to things he rather not dwell on, not right now, he might have noticed Sam's expression, he might have seen the way her teeth were biting into her lower lip, how pinched her expression had become, that crease between her eyebrows. Things being as they were_—_

"I forgot I had something for you."

David came back to reality, attention moving away from the fog outside and back inside the living room, to where Sam stood, reaching inside her corset.

"Here."

David could but stare, these two paper rectangles, these two pictures she had just given him leaving him to stare at what was depicted in confusion. The first photo showed an elderly man with sharp blue eyes. The second the green cliffs of an island. None told David what on Earth he was meant to do with them and so he looked up again, at Sam, the black eyebrow that wasn't hidden by his mask being raised at her.

"That is Angela's father," Sam clarified, one of her black colored nails tapping the top of an elder's photograph.

At that information, David actually looked. A few seconds of studying the confident face smirking at him, however, left him with this uncomfortable feeling on the back of his mind.

"Where did you find_—_?"

David stopped short of looking at the second picture.

"Do I want to know how these even got __here?" __he snapped looking at Sam. She simply shrugged.

"I searched through Angela's belongings," she said, her candor such David was left glaring.

__"Sam."__

Sam crossed her arms.

"The University was packing her things," she explained. "You know, so they could open the room to a new student? I just dropped by and grabbed hold of those."

David had just stepped away from the window. A disbelieving look being thrown at Sam, he moved passed the table and the empty fireplace.

"We are putting these back," he announced, long strides aiming him right for the door. "If the University was going to ship these to her family—!"

"Those weren't going to her family."

David stopped. The words that had just risen from behind him made him turn to find Sam still where he had left her, framed between the red curtains and with the large window behind her back.

"Those weren't going to her family," she repeated and she hesitated, for a moment she did. "Those were going for the trash. No one wants her things."

There was silence. The hammering of rain on the windows the only sound in the living room as David found his attention called to Laura's watercolors over the empty fireplace, to the stereo, to the many CDs that were inside, to that line of colorful portfolios inside a cabinet he had left open.

"No one?" David repeated quietly, attention going back to Sam and the necklace she wore, the one that had belonged to his mother, that had somehow made its way to her. "Maybe her family wants her things to be donated or_—_"

"They don't care?"

The rain just seemed to have become harsher, it hammered against the window with enough strength to almost drown Sam's words—and judging by the way she had just shaken her head, her eyes fleeing David's, she would much rather they had.

"Look, those are just pictures," Sam went on to say, right hand closed over her left arm, pulling it closer. "Angela was the only one who valued them, even if the University finds someplace to donate her things, those won't mean a thing to anyone. It makes absolutely no difference if I took them."

David pinched his lips as he stopped in front of Sam. That wasn't the reason why he had just crossed the entire dining room to come back to her. That wasn't the reason why he had just touched her face. Still, he went back to the pictures, frowning at the man smirking at him from the first one and at the green cliffs and gray skies on the second.

He had a very good idea of what he was looking and yet, for the sake of taking Sam's mind out of whatever had left her with that expression, he asked it all the same.

"What place is this?"

"Angela's home," she immediately answered. "The Island of Muhr."

What happened next wasn't anything like David had planned. He had meant to distract Sam, to distract __her__. Instead, he seemed to have just found a way to distract himself. In fact, it was very probable he had done it to the point he had even forgotten Sam was here. Fingers slipping away from her face, going back to hang beside him, David had just turned his back on the dinning room, he was moving into the atrium to sit on the first step of the stairway, eyes jumping between Jessie Mullholand and the island he was born, where his daughter had grown up.

By the time David finally came back from his thoughts, Sam sat at his side, on the atrium stairs, legs pulled to her chest, attention resting on the uncovered side of his face.

"You just thought of something, didn't you?"

Glancing Sam's way, finding a curious gleam to her eyes, David pinched his lips.

"Yes," he spoke, already getting up. "But I don't have time to explain it, it will prove hard enough to convince myself."

Sam raised her eyebrows. Arms letting go of her legs, she stretched her neck as high as she could to watch David march to the door to the basement.

"To convince yourself of __what?"__ she called after him.

"Not now, Sam."

The door clicked behind David, the light being turned on on the stairs to the basement making a small blade of light appear under it.

Left alone on the atrium, Sam shook her head and rose, a last look being given to the basement door before she went up the stairs.

__Yeah__, she sighed mentally. __Not now. __She would try to ask David another time, but be it tomorrow, or the day after that, she would get no answer and at one point she would just give up on asking. David, Sam told herself, would tell her. Eventually. She just had to wait.

In the end, however, Sam would regret waiting, for when she did find out what David was up too, he would already have his bags by the door.


End file.
